MMPR- Things Change (unpolished draft)
by Dr. Caine
Summary: What Tommy did was for the best. There were no other options. He had to go back and save him. But unfortunately, actions have consequences, ones that affect not only him and the team but the entire universe.
1. Chain Reaction

Only in Angel Grove could a trip to the local coffee shop end with someone almost being eaten alive, but mister and misses Douglas didn't think much about that. They were just enjoying their mocha lattes at the Lean Bean.

"So Ben, about the truck," Mrs. Douglas said, and Ben's heart skipped a beat. Oh god, he was hoping that she wouldn't bring it up. She'd be trying to convince him to sell his baby for the past month now. But why? It's fine, just needs some work done is all. Ben Douglas stammered for words.

"Well, uh, you see. . . I was kinda hoping for—"

Glass rained on him as a gargantuan blue claw smashed through the window, grabbing her in its clutch. Her nails scrapped across the table as she shrieked. The claw snatched her out of the building.

"Rachel!" He rushed over to the shattered frame. The beast's blue tail slithered around the street corner. _It got her! My god, it got her!_ Ben faced the coffee shop's crowd. "Somebody do something!"

Everybody in the Lean Bean, from the elderly couple in the back to the teenage girl in the front, from the local baseball team on the left to the owner behind the counter looked up from their phones, shrugged their shoulders, then looked back at their phones again.

* * *

The beast turned Rachel's brain into jelly as it ran with her in its claw, shaking her around. Blurred images swiped past her as she was tossed around: claws digging, people running, police chasing.

Sounds of screams were washed out by the wind rushing through her ears. The beast stopped. She was held in front of it, facing all of it, screaming at the giant slimy slug with eight spindly legs.

Opening its gaping mouth, she saw the rows of teeth that lined all the way down its throat. It pulled her into its mouth. She closed her eyes.

"Say aah," a voice called out.

Her eyes shot open. Orange light blasted into its mouth, and it gagged and convulsed. Its slimy body bubbled like an egg in a frying pan, and he beast expanded and expanded until it exploded, tossing her.

Something caught her. She was being held. Turning over, she saw a shiny, white, golden encrusted helmet looking down at her. The White Ranger had caught her, had saved her.

* * *

 **Tommy**

Carefully, Tommy put the old lady back down on her feet, and she smiled at him. _Got to love some good, old-fashioned, gratitude,_ he thought. An old guy came up, hugged the lady, then gave Tommy a furious handshake with both hands.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!" the old guy said.

Tommy smirked through his helmet. "It was nothing, really," he said, "It's all just in a day's work for a hero who heroically puts his life on the line to help. . ."

The old people stared behind him. Turning around, he cringed. The top and bottom half of the creature smushed themselves back together like Plato. It's limbs extended out of its form. A new mouth of fangs stretched open, releasing a hiss.

"Crap."

The creature hobbled away at high speed. With a sigh, Tommy looked down at the blaster rifle hanging off his shoulder. This sucked. All that time spent planning was down the toilet. Now he had to figure out how to keep track of this thing.

He scanned through the street to see if he could find anybody who would be willing to help. The police and emergency services were scattered throughout the street trying to help people out. They would soon close this part of town down and that would make it hard to find a lift.

But, at the very edge of his vision, a brightly colored car came down the road. "Taxi!" Tommy yelled as he ran in front of the car, stopping it with his hands. Now that he was up close to the car, he saw that it wasn't a taxi at all. A little sign on the hood read: _Kali's Pizza._

The driver stuck his head out of the window, pulling down his aviators from his face "Woah man, are you, like, a Power Dude?" he said.

"Yeah, uh dude, can you give me a lift?" Tommy asked.

"Oh, awesome man! Come right in!"

He hopped into the car and gazed down at his wrist. Time to make _the call._

* * *

 **Billy**

 _The ability to create change or do work_ , Billy's flashcard read. Energy, the answer had to be energy. Flipping the card over, he found out that he'd guess correctly, just like he'd done with the first one hundred cards.

His wrist communicator vibrated. Something must have gone wrong. His eyes shifted from one fellow sleeping classmate to another. Carefully, he sneaked out of his desk and headed for the door.

"Where do you think you're going," Mr. Anderson called from his desk.

"Restroom," Billy said.

Anderson stood up from his desk and glared down at him. Their weekly showdown was beginning again. "Billy, I don't suppose those cards you were looking at were for _my class,_ were they?"

"No, sir."

"Well," Anderson said, "since you were so busy, I suppose you wouldn't know how to find the standard deviation of the data table on the board."

Billy's eyes shifted over to the board for a nanosecond. The table was: _10,2,38,23,38,23,21._ His eyes shifted back to Anderson. "The standard deviation is _13.285._ "

"What? How?"

"The first step is to calculate the mean," Billy said, "then subtract the mean from each numeral, then each result needs to be squared. Determine the average of the squared numerals and square root it to find the final answer. May I use the restroom?"

Anderson slumped back in his chair. "Fine."

Walking down the hallway, Billy pinched the silver button on the communicator. "What is the conundrum?"

Tommy's voice came through. "Your thingie didn't work," he said.

"That is statistically improbable," Billy whispered, "The beam was specially designed to stop neutron flow and hinder emomosis. The Vlork's molecular structure should have disassembled."

"Sorry Einstein, It didn't. He put himself back together like last time."

Possibilities swirled in his head. Did the beam not work because of the flux capacitance? Or the electron disturbance? Was energy distribution a factor? All of these questions and more went through his mind, one new thought ever half a second.

Jason entered the call. "We're gonna have to go with Plan B."

"Plan B?!" Tommy chimed back in, "Dude, you know Plan B isn't gonna work."

Billy ground his teeth together. _And they're at it again,_ he thought. _Why is every little insignificant thing such a colossal catastrophe for these two? Do they not have anything better to do?_

Tommy continued on with his rant, lowering the tone of his voice. "You can't just expect to corner something so—"

"We're running out of time," Jason said, "It's Plan B. Billy, I need you to beam out here in five, alright?"

"Yes sir," Billy said as Jason left the call.

"You don't actually expect this to work, do you, Billy?" Tommy asked.

Rubbing his neck, Billy tried to formulate a proper response. "Well, perhaps I made an oversight while constructing the N-Ray, and perhaps there might be a way to fix it."

"So you'll help me show off to Jason?" Tommy asked.

"Yes, sir. . ." Sometimes, however not very often, Billy really wished he was Zack. At least he doesn't have to do deal with this nonsense.

* * *

 **Zack**

 _Time for my crowning moment of awesomeness,_ Zack thought. He really relished his part in Jason's plan because he knew Tommy would be so jealous of what he was about to do. He was gonna be as cool as ice, and all he had to do was wait for the beasty to come to him and the fun could begin.

The vibrations rumbled through the concrete beneath his feet. He tightened his grip on the handlebars of his bike. He kept his eyes peeled and his foot on the pedal. And there it was, that weird blue worm-spider-thingie was crawling at high speed down the road. _My time is now!_

Slowly, he made the black bike do a wheelie and backed it out of the alleyway. He laughed. "Moonwalking! I'm making the bike moonwalk!" He slid the bike right in front of the creature. It stared him, even though it didn't have eyes.

"Hola señor!" Zack yelled. "Do you think you can touch this?!"

It hissed at him.

Spanking himself, he said: "Come and get it!" He popped another wheelie before speeding away.

It was working, the creature followed him and even turned the corner to do so. In his mirror, the creature was excitedly chasing after him like a puppy chasing a fly.

 _Let's have fun with him_. Zack swerved from the left to the right, each time the creature jumped a little to catch him, but he was too fast for it. He steered the creature into a right turn, Unfortunately, the fun would be over soon. At the end of the road was where the real deal was.

* * *

 **Kimberly**

 _Come on!_ she thought, pacing on the roof, placing her arrow neatly into the bow. _Can this slimester get over here already so that I can get back to more important things?!_ Kim was on her way to meet her friends at the mall when Jason called her in. This sucker was gonna pay for wanting to tear up the town on a Saturday.

Peering into the scope, she lined up her shot onto the street below. _Any minute now, it's gonna come crawling to me faster than Jeremy did during homecoming. Patience is key._ From the edge of her sight, Zack's bike materialized with the freak not far behind.

 _Gross!_ Its tongue flopped in the wind as it made its way toward her, drooling blue slime. Focusing it into her sight, she knew exactly what she wanted to hit, its bulbous forehead. She zoomed in on it, pulling the arrow back.

"You ready, Trini?" she asked.

* * *

 **Trini**

"Yeah, I'm ready," Trini lied. _What a terrible day,_ she thought, _another terrible day in a horrible week, within an awful month, in an appalling year, in a dreadful life. What's the point? We'll try, but it will only get away again._

She spun her daggers in her hands and looked up at Kim. _Maybe not, maybe today will finally end differently._ The creature barreled down the street toward them. Without missing a beat, Kim released the pink arrow.

It flung into the creature's head, exploding into a cloud of pink smoke. The creature wriggled and writhed as it coughed.

 _Now!_ She flipped the dagger's switch. Electricity sparked between the two blades and she threw them at the writhing creature. One stabbed into its shoulder.

 _Yes!_

The other dagger stabbed into the asphalt behind the creature.

 _No!_

The dazed creature ran out of the smoke cloud and into the street. _Great,_ she thought, _just another miserable day in the horrid cycle of the universe that we all exist in. Why do I even try? What does it ever get me? Kim doesn't need to try, neither does Tommy._

* * *

 **Tommy**

"So like, you just want me to follow this thing?", the driver asked.

"Yeah just keep up," Tommy said. He was fiddling with the knob on the blaster trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

Tommy called Billy up again. "What do you think is wrong with this thing?"

"I suppose it's possible that the energy isn't being properly distributed to garner a lasting effect," Billy said.

Energy distribution? An idea popped into Tommy's head, a crazy idea, a wonderfully crazy idea. He turned the knob to maximum power and smashed the gun against the dash of the car.

The driver looked over at Tommy, "Uh dude, do you know what you're doing."

"Relax citizen, I am a trained professional," Tommy said as he kept banging the gun against the car. _This oughta show Jason._

* * *

 **Jason**

 _Perfect,_ Jason thought, moving through the pink cloud, _everything is on it's way to being perfect, even if it isn't right now. We might not have been able to stop it before, but we got it now. The Vlork is dazed and it's stumbling. If I get it in just the right spot. . ._

With his sword, Jason sliced off three of the creature's limbs, sending it to the ground. All the rangers gathered around him, except for Tommy. _Where is—_

The Vlork's legs began to reform.

 _Nevermind._ "Okay, we don't have much time. Zack, you fire heavy at the head. Kim, you go for its legs. Trin—" The slam of a car door brought Jason's speech to a halt. _What the. . ._

"Don't worry Jase, I got this," Tommy said as he climbed out of the car.

 _What exactly does he think he's doing?_ Tommy walked right past the team, patted Jason on the shoulder, and kept on walking towards the beast with the sparking blaster in his hand.

The beast stood up as its legs reformed.

"Pretty hungry, right? Eat me!" Tommy yelled.

"Tommy!" Jason said, "What are you doing?"

"Relax man," Tommy said before turning his attention to the monster. "Eat me!"

"Tommy wait!"

The creature snatched Tommy with his claw and swallowed him whole. The creature bubbled and bubbled until it exploded. The goo splashed all over Jason and the rangers. Jason looked around at the smoky, blue goo covered landscape. _Why—_

Something tapped on his shoulder, and he turned.

Tommy wiped the goo off of Jason's helmet. "I bet you didn't see that coming!" he exclaimed.

"But how?!" Jason asked.

"Teleporter," Tommy said.

"Oh."

Angel Grove's citizens gathered around the rangers. They took pictures and shoved papers into their faces. "Now, now people, there is enough for everybody," Tommy said as he signed autographs.

Jason just glared at him.

* * *

Teleportation is a weird experience. Your entire body gets broken down into atoms and is shot through space. Everything feels tingly and all you can see is a blinding light. But it only lasts a split second.

Tommy beamed into the command center to hang out. He opened his eyes to see the great blue interior of the command center. He stepped off of the teleporter pad and onto the blue crystal floor. He saw the open area and all the rangers. He looked over to see the collection of metal shelves at Billy's workstation and walked over there.

Billy had his lenses locked onto his computer screen.

"Hey Billy, how are you doing?" Tommy asked.

"I'm diagnosing the teleporter to ensure it's running at full capacity." Billy didn't even look up from his screen.

"I said 'how' are you doing?"

"Oh uh, okay," Billy said.

"Hey guys, check this out!", Zack said running toward them from the back of the room. _What is on his face?_ Zack had all these little patches covering his cheeks and his chin. All the patches had wires that connected to a device in his hand.

"Look at this!", Zack said as he pressed the button on the device. His eyes squinted and his face contorted and stretched into a wide uncomfortable smile. Tommy could see all of Zack's teeth as if a dentist was pulling his cheeks away from them with a tool.

"Hey man, does something look funny to you?!"Zack said with slurred and gurgly speech. Tommy couldn't help but crack up at how ridiculous it was.

Zack turned the device off. "Funny right?"

"Yeah, yeah that's great Zack," Billy said without even looking up from the computer.

Zack looked disappointed at Billy's reaction but quickly bounced back. "Hey Billy, is it okay if I drink the bleach on your shelf?"

"Yeah, yeah that's great Zack," Billy repeated. Zack laughed and hopped back behind the shelves.

Tommy laughed as he walked away. _Those two always find a way to amaze me._ He stopped. Trini laid on a bench scribbling something on her notebook. This was a scene he had many times before and he knew it wasn't any good.

He approached her. Her face was buried into what she was doing and was hidden behind her black hair. "What you drawing there?" he asked.

"A barista who tries her hardest at work, but keeps getting the orders wrong," she said as she kept violently stabbing the book with her pen.

"Oh, for a second I thought it was something serious."

"That's not funny," Trini said, "I screwed up again."

"Again? What do you mean?", Tommy asked

"Like, two months ago when I couldn't hit the Golrium," Trini said.

"Hey, that was a hard shot to make."

"Or how about that time I couldn't rescue those people from the Snare Beast?"

"We didn't know where it was at the time."

"Okay, how about the time I was held hostage by a putty?" Trini asked.

"You did get out of—"

"It didn't even have a head anymore Tommy! How did it even see me?"

"Listen, You're just going through a rough patch. We all have bad luck on the job every once in awhile," he said.

"I guess," Trini said.

Kim came running in. "Hey girl, you wanna go and look at weird people at the mall?" she asked.

"Yes!" she said before they ran off.

 _Friends are good to have,_ he thought.

"Hey Tommy," Jason called from the platform.

 _Somedays I wish I had different ones._ Jason walked down from the Command Center platform with _that face._ It was that face that Jason put on every time he tried to look like someone who you should take seriously. It didn't work on anybody, but nobody really wanted to tell him.

"What you did today was dangerous and irresponsible," Jason said.

"Maybe," Tommy said, "but it worked."

"You could've gotten hurt and then we would've had to taken out the Vlork ourselves."

"Hey at least i did something, Okay? Your plan was just to take it down and just hope you could destroy it before it could regenerate," Tommy said.

"What if you didn't teleport away in time?"

" _What if?_ What if your plan didn't work and the Vlork went on to eat six more people?" Tommy said.

"I understand that, but you can't just ignore. . ."

Tommy began to zone Jason out as went on and on,on his usual spiel. It wasn't like Tommy didn't want to pay attention when Jason spoke. It's just that Jason often did this annoying thing where he would stop talking to you and then begin to talk _at you_. He would almost preach and not even look at you. He'd just pace back and forth with his finger pointed out, as if that made him look smart.

Jason's voice faded back into Tommy's ears: "What makes you think can keep doing this Tommy?", Jason asked.

Tommy thought for a second and came up with something he knew Jason wasn't gonna like: "Because I can't lose."

" Tommy, I—" Jason was interrupted by the blaring sound of the Command Center alarm. Everyone ran to the center platform as the interior of the Command Center flashed red.

Tommy was always impressed by Zordon's ability to make an entrance with style. Two large bolts of lightning hit a pair of tesla coils at the to opposite side of the room. The electricity flowed through the coils down under floor. The blue crystal floor became translucent and the rangers could see the electricity run through wires under the Command Center before rising to top of two more tesla coils by the command platform. The coils then shot the electricity into Zordon's projection tube. Small particles inside the tube fused together to form Zordon's digital face.

"Rangers," Zordon said in his echoing voice, "There has been a disturbance at Angel Grove's Galactic History Institute. Observe the viewing globe." The giant crystal ball floated down from the ceiling. A news broadcast projected into it.

The news showed an image of the outside of the building with a headline at the bottom reading: _Robbery at new Galactic History Museum._ A lady's voice read aloud: "The institute, dedicated to studying and preserving artifacts from cultures on other planets, opened its doors this morning to find that one of its most recent additions to its collection is missing. Though Authorities are not willing to say what specifically was taken."

"I guess it was a matter of time," Tommy said. Ever since the Power Rangers showed up in Angel Grove, more and more people have become interested in alien technology. Tommy knew it was a matter of time before somebody found something they could profit from.

"Is this really our problem?" Zack said, "I mean, stuff gets stolen all the time."

"True Zachary, but the Vlork seemed to be heading straight toward the institute right when your rangers stopped. I believe there might be something at the institute that Lord Zedd wants his hands on, if he doesn't have it already," Zordon said.

"If there is even a possibility that Lord Zedd could've taken something that he could as weapon, we must go after it," Jason said, "Tommy, Kim and I will investigate what happened, and I'll call the rest of you if we need the backup, is everyone ready?"

"Yes," everyone shouted.

"Alright! It's Morphin' Time!" he called.

As Tommy's armor wrapped around him, he wondered: if Jason doesn't agree with anything Tommy does, then why does Jason always bring him along?

* * *

The three of them walked into the large maple-colored lobby. Things were chaotic as men and women in red business jackets ran about with papers in their hands. A lot of them were running towards men in black suits wearing sunglasses. Tommy got a glance of the last Angel Grove policeman leaving the scene, there was nothing more they were allowed to do.

A plump man with huge round glasses came up and shook Jason's hand. The man spoke to Jason. It was hard for Tommy to hear what he was saying over ringing of five different phones, but it sounded like: "Oh, It's nice to finally have the Power Rangers here. I'm and I run the show here, and as you can see, we could really use your help."

"We're always ready to help. What happened?" Jason said.

"Of course, let me take you to the exhibit." Bennett showed them the shattered glass case. It was being swiped and scanned by five different men in black suits. Two of the men, baldy and blondie, glared at the rangers.

"Who invited you?" the baldy in black asked.

"Rude much?' Kim said.

Blondie flashed his badge, even though the rangers were very familiar with what the badge looked like by now. "Listen, this is an issue for the Extraterrestrial Security Bureau to solve. We don't need your help."

 _I already had enough of this,_ Tommy thought. ""Look man, we just want to know what was taken, alright? And we don't appreciate—"

Jason placed a hand on his shoulder.

"It didn't seem like anything important," Mr. Bennett said.

"If it was important, then it wouldn't have been stolen. It's classified," baldy said.

"If Lord Zedd could be involved, then it is our problem. We agreed to that," Jason said.

Even through the sunglasses, Tommy could see the look in baldy's eyes, the looking of giving in."I suppose so," he said.

"Right then," Bennett chimed in, "the object in question was a tablet recovered from a dig site out beyond the Angel Grove desert,believed to be ancient of alien origin."

"On Earth?" Kim asked.

"We believe the tablet may be evidence of some sort colonization effort from an civilization on earth before the time of man," blondie explained.

Bennett continued. "The tablet itself didn't seem that significant, so the E.S.B allowed it to be housed here. We were about to go public with the discovery this morning until. . ."

"Now," baldy said.

"So, you need are help then?" Tommy asked.

"No we don't. There is no concrete evidence that Zedd is involved. This is a purely domestic issue that the E.S.B can handle itself," baldy said.

"Wouldn't security be pretty tight around here?" Kim asked.

"The best," blondie said.

"So, what are the chances of this being a just normal robbery then?" Kim asked.

Baldy seemed miffed. "Listen here, I already have enough trouble on my plate here without you people—"

"Walker, Shaw," Jason referred to baldy and blondie, respectively. "May I have a word alone?"

 _Walker? Shaw?_ Jason actually took the time to remember these jokers names? How could he? To Tommy, every single one of them looked more or less the same. They acted and sounded the same too.

It was hard not to admire Jason's ability smooth things over with the government. Despite not being able to show his face, Jason was pretty good at being the face of the team. He was always able to calm these paranoid nuts down. Tommy couldn't do that job. He always got the sense that these people had no idea what they were dealing with half the told Tommy and Kim to wait while he and Adams talked it over. Tommy leaned against a door.

"I think you may have a problem with authority," Kim said.

"Nah, authority has a problem with me. And now that I that think about it, it has one with you too," Tommy said.

Kim giggled. "Well maybe, but at least I try."

"It's just that these guys haven't seen what we've seen," Tommy said, "And they think we're the problem."

"It's not easy for them either,," Kim said.

"I guess." Tommy was bored. He pulled a quarter out of his belt compartment, flipping it, catching it in the air.

"Tommy you have to—"

"Oops, hold on Kim." Tommy dropped the quarter and it was rolling across the hallway. Tommy crouched walked across the hall. He could feel the strange looks people were giving as a superhero ran after some runaway change.

The quarter managed to roll all the way to the end of a small hallway on the side of the building. The quarter bounced off a door and hit the floor. "Gotcha," Tommy said, "Now I can buy that pack of gum."

"Yes it was necessary, stop worrying," a voice said from behind the door.

Slowly, he looked through the small window on the door. Inscripted on the window, were the words: _Dr. Forrester_. In the room, there was a white haired man talking on the phone while trying to shove as many things into a bag as possible.

"Look, they're not going to suspect anything," the man said,"They probably think an alien did it."

The man grabbed a large book from the inside of his desk and tried to put it into the bag, but the bag wouldn't shut. He adjusted the contents of his bag and Tommy could see him pull out the corner of an object out so he make room in his bag. It looked like it was made out of stone.

 _The Tablet._

The man tried to quickly hop out of his office window. Tommy went for the doorknob, locked. He smashed through the door window and climbed through. He looked through the office window and saw the man climbing into his car.

He knew he had to go after him, so he quickly looked around to see if anybody was looking. The coast was clear, so he demorphed and climbed out the window. Tommy ran after the car.

"Tommy, where are you going?!" Kim's voice called out.

He yelled without looking back: "Keep an eye on my location!"

* * *

Tommy hid behind a trash can. He saw the man walk out of his car enter his house. Keeping low to the ground, he went onto the house's yard and hid below the window.

The man entered the living room. He was still on the phone, and he threw his bag onto a chair."Just be here in less than an hour,okay?" The man said as he left the living room, out of Tommy's sight.

 _I'm only gonna have one opportunity to get this guy_ , Tommy thought, _If I wait for Jason to show up, we might get caught up in red tape._ Tommy knew he had to move now.

Tommy grabbed some paper clips from his pocket and picked the lock. He slowly opened the door and sneaked into the house. He waited to hear Forrester's voice, but he heard nothing so he moved to left get to the living room and grabbed the bag.

He opened the bag and thumbed through its contents until he pulled out the tablet. It was square but with an oval top. Embelzeld on it were twenty stone squares, each one with a symbol on it. He rubbed his fingers over the squares, and images stabbed into his brain.

 _A pyramid with huge stone stairs._

 _Flash!_

 _A gigantic round room with shadows bowing down to something in the center._

 _Flash!_

 _Red fire burning into the shape of a eye._

 _Flash!_

Screaming, he dropped the tablet. He fell to his knees as he rubbed his throbbing head. His vision slowly readjusted to room was spinning and he had trouble getting his eyes to focus.

 _What the hell just happened_? Tommy thought, but he had no time to figure it out because heard footsteps approaching. He heard something else too, a murmuring, a humming.

". . . _Shining, shimmering splendid. . ."_ Forrester murmered.

 _Is. . . is that the Aladdin love song?_ Tommy thought. No time to think about. Tommy morphed just as Forrester approached.

The man was stunned to see the White Ranger, his eyes were about to pop out of this round glasses."What are you doing in my home?! This is considered breaking and entering!"

"Yeah well, you're not exactly so clean yourself sir," Tommy grabbed the tablet off the floor waved it in his face.

Give that back to me you fascist!" Forrester ran toward him, but Tommy could easily hold him back but holding his hand out.

"Oh, so I'm fascist now, huh? Tell me, am I facist-fascist, or a 'I just don't like this guy so i need to insult him'-fascist?" Forrester struggled to grab the tablet, but Tommy was able to hold it above his head.

Forrester eventually stopped and pulled himself back. "It's because of people like you that humanity is being held back from achieving their greatest potential," he said, almost spitting.

"People like me?"

"Yes! For years, I've worked at the Institute trying to make new discoveries leading to new advances in technology. I try my best to advance people's understanding of the universe, _but people like you_ take my life's work away from me and suppress it from the people!"

 _Why is this dude blaming me for his problems?_ Tommy thought. "I believe you should fill out a comment card to the E.S.B for that."

"Same difference! I know you have your own secrets that you're hiding from them!" Forrester was almost drooling at this point.

"Hey wasn't your institute about to announce major discovery today? Involving this?" Tommy wagged the tablet in front of his face.

"Oh sure, the people will be allowed to know that what we found exists, but that's just to pacify them. Everything we'll dig up will be probed and prodded to make sure we don't discover something that could fundamentally change our understanding of the universe!" Forrester's head twitched.

 _Maybe he's got a point_ , Tommy admitted to himself. He didn't exactly like the E.S.B himself, but he wouldn't trust this guy with making breakfast, let alone the secrets of the universe. Tommy saw the E.S.B pull up to the house through the window.

"Sorry sir, It was fun but our time's up."

* * *

Three armed guards pushed Forrester into the back of a truck. He struggled of course, but his frail body was not a match for them. All he could do was scream: "What are you gonna do when we don't need you anymore! What are you gonna do!"

Walker was quick to pull the tablet from out of Tommy's hands. He was kind enough to bother with fake gratitude. Through the grit of his teeth he managed to say: "Thank you for the help." As forced as it was, that did make Tommy feel good inside.

Jason approached Tommy, arms crossed. "A simple call would've been fine."

He grabbed Jason by the shoulders. "We need to get the tablet back."

"What?"

"There's something not right about it. We need to look over it," Tommy said.

Jason tilted his head. "We're in hot water as it is. If it turned out Forrester didn't steal the tablet, then the E.S.B would—"

"I know, I know, but you have to trust me on this one. I touched it and it made me see _things_."

"What kind of things?"

"Flashes, pictures of things from a long time ago. I have weird feeling that there might be something buried in that desert that could be dangerous." As he spoke, Tommy realized his ramblings were eerily similar to Forrester's. _But I'm not crazy._

Jason sighed. "Tommy. . ."

"Just work your magic like you usually do," Tommy said

"Walker isn't as easy to convince," Jason said.

"We have to try.'

"What are we gonna find that the E.S.B can't?" Jason asked.

"Ah,you forget." Tommy smirked. "We have one thing the U.S government doesn't have."

"What?"

* * *

 _Seeing Billy work is like magic,_ Tommy thought as he observed him. Billy's eyes were glued to the tablet. He grabbed what looked like silver pen attached to a cord and scanned it over the surface of the tablet, and he looked over at a computer monitor, where the symbols on the tablet were being compared to other symbols that were quickly flashing on the right side of the screen.

The others were always in awe when they saw Billy in his element. They couldn't take their eyes off of him. Everytime he moved from one side of the table to the other, the rangers would in unison tilt their head in that direction. Everytime he said "yes" or "no" to himself, they would repeat back to him. _Does he find this annoying?_

His eyes squinted at the screen. "No, that can't be," he whispered.

Billy got up ran into the back of the room and returned with a huge dusty book. He had access to Zordon's excessive library of books from millions planets between a couple of galaxies, and he tried to study it as best of he could. Tommy knew if anybody was gonna find anything from the tablet, it would be him.

Billy opened the book and smaller paperback book on his desk. He ran his two index fingers through the texts, while turning his head from book to another. He looked back the monitor. There was a familiar spark in his eyes. _He got something._

"What is it Billy?" Tommy asked.

"These symbols belong to a language that exists but does not exist at the same time," Billy said.

"What does that mean?" Jason asked.

"These symbols share structural similarities to over forty different alien languages, around twenty-five are known to be from some of the oldest living civilizations," Billy said.

"So, you're saying these different species may be connected?" Jason said.

"Indeed and in fact a couple of years ago, a Mirinoi archaeologist, Dr. Xanei, theorized that all of the most ancient of these civilizations were influenced by a common ancestor. He even theorized that this common ancestor would have it's own language very similar to the one inscribed on this tablet."

"So, what does that make the people who made the tablet?' Tommy asked.

"I think what we are looking at here is evidence of the first advanced civilization to exist in the known universe, right here in Angel Grove," Billy said.

"But, why would they be here?" Zack asked.

"Well, if they had such an influence on other planets, then it is reasonable to suspect they may have came here too. Perhaps, they tried to colonize here billions of years ago."

"Is that everything you can gather from the tablet?" Jason asked.

"Without being able to directly translate it, yes," Billy said.

"Well then, I guess all we can do is return the tablet," Jason said, reaching for it.

"Wait, wait, stop," Tommy said as he put his hand on Jason's shoulder, "I think we should check out the dig site where they found this."

"I could barely get us to look at the tablet," Jason said.

"I know, but i'm telling you this thing messed with my head, This tablet made me feel something I hadn't felt since . . . _the incident._ " Tommy didn't like to talk about what happened between him and Lord Zedd, but it was true, just touching that thing for second reminded him of what Zedd did to him.

"I see," Jason said.

"If that tablet did that to me, I could only imagine what other things may be buried down there," Tommy said.

"I suppose. . ."

"You said it yourself, if there is even a possibility that Lord Zedd could find anything to use as a weapon, then we gotta go for it," Tommy said. He grinded is teeth together as Jason looked at the tablet, then back to him.

"You're right," he admitted.

* * *

Jason, Tommy, and Zack arrived. The dig site was a vast desert, covered with several red tents. Many people were spread out into small groups of three to six people digging in small spots. There was a mix of people wearing proper outdoor clothes and the E.S.B agents in their black suits. Tommy wondered if they regretted trying to look cool in the California heat. Walker saw that they arrived.

"No, no, no, you were given permission to observe the tablet for 24 hours. We didn't say that you could show up here," Walker said.

"What did you think we would do if found something?" Tommy asked.

Walker rubbed his temple. "Did you find any evidence that the tablet is in anyway connected to any threat."

Jason carefully explained the situation to Walker

"And what is it any business is if it of yours if we found something advanced?" Walker asked.

"If you don't know what is, it may be used against you. You might be putting the lives of the people here at risk. Even we don't completely know what's down there," Jason explained.

Tommy felt the steam coming off of Walker. The agent quickly excused himself to make a phone didn't hear much. The most he heard was Walker repeating: "But, sir," and, "Yes, sir."

"Fifteen minutes, you have fifteen minutes," Walker said to them. He walked them to the other side of the dig site and showed them the opening of cave resting on the ground.

"Alright, you two explore the cave, while Walker and I look at the other dig sites," Jason said.

Tommy and Zack walked down in E.S.B had explored deep into the cavern. As they walked the natural light from the sun faded and they had to rely on the light coming from the lanterns that the excavation crew put up.

Zack broke the silence with his scotsman. "Is thaur somethin' botherin' ye? Ye ur affa quite ower thaur, laddy."

"I don't know man," Tommy said. "Something is just weird." They reached the end of the tunnel where excavators were beating at the rock wall with pick axes. One of them greeted the rangers.

"Any problems?" Tommy asked.

"Eh, this batch of rock is stronger than we're use to. The most we could manage was this." the man pointed to a small hole that one could crawl through.

"Oh! I'll go first!" Zack said as he climbed into the hole.

"Are you sure?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah, it will be fun!" Zack crawled deep into the small tunnel.

Tommy crouched down to see Zack. After a few feet, Zack faded into darkness, but he could still hear the sound of Zack fumbling over loose rocks.

"Do you see anything weird?" Tommy called out.

"No," Zack called back, " just a bunch of rocks. This tunnel goes on forever."

Jason called on the communicator: "Any progress?"

"Not yet, how about you?" Tommy said.

"The E.S.B found small shards that be from pottery, but that's about it."

"Well maybe—"

A huge crashed echoed through the cave, followed by a thud.

"What happened?!" Jason asked.

"Oh god, Zack's stuck. I gotta get him out," Tommy said.

"Wait for me," Jason said.

Tommy wasn't gonna wait, he grabbed one of the ropes from the excavators and crawled after Zack. Tommy's ranger helmet had automatic night vision, so could see ahead of him well enough. He tried to crawl through the cave as slowly as possible so he wouldn't accidently fall. Inch by inch, Tommy would crawl while keeping his head so he could see if there was a break in the ground.

Then he felt it, the rock beneath him was starting to feel a lot thinner now. Every movement was making the ground crack a little.

He saw it. He saw the gaping chasm before him. He grabbed the edge of it and tried to look down. The night vision allowed him to see about twenty feet down.

"Zack!" he called out. "Zack, can you hear me!"

"Yeah," Zack yelled. What a relief that was.

"Did you find him?" Jason's voice echoed.

"Yeah," Tommy called back.

"Let me, get in there and help," Jason said.

"No, all three of us might be stuck then. I'm gonna climb down and get him."

"Alright," Jason said.

Tommy was a little glad to know Jason trusted him enough to let him do this, but he didn't have time think about that. Tommy had to awkwardly hold onto the walls of the cave he tried to re-orientate his body so that the front of his body faced where the cave entrance was. It was hard, but Tommy's training gave a decent amount of flexibility to do it.

"Alright lower me down."

Tommy slowly hopped down the wall of the cave as Jason and the others fed him more rope. Eventually, he ran out of wall to walk down and he had to be slowly lowered down in mid-air.

He felt his feet hit the ground. He called Jason to stop moving the rope.

"Zack, where are you?'

"Here," Zack called from behind him.

Tommy put a hand on Zack's shoulder. "You okay?"

"A little shaken up, but that was kinda fun. It's weird how there is another huge cave under the other one," Zack said.

"Yeah that is weird." _A little too weird,_ Tommy thought. It was too weird to be a simple coincidence. There had to be more to it.

"Did you find him?" Jason asked on the communicator.

"Yeah, he's fine."

"Hey Jason," Zack said.

"We're in huge opening," Tommy said, "Zack and I are gonna look around for a couple minutes, okay?"

Jason was silent for a moment.

"Okay, Jason?" Tommy asked.

"Okay," he finally said, "but you guys are running out of time."

Tommy and Zack walked through the cavern. Somehow, now that they were deeper underground, they were in a much more open area. The cave's ceiling was probably fifty feet above their head, and it seemed like they could walk it for miles.

"Did you hear that?" Zack asked.

"Hear what?'

"Listen," Zack said.

There was a weird grinding noise coming from behind them. Like somebody was dragging rocks behind them as they walked. The noise was getting closer and closer to them.

"Hide."

Tommy looked around until he found a huge boulder that the two could hide behind. They ran behind the boulder and waited.

As the noise got closer, Tommy could make out more ofthe sound. He heard a light hissing sound under the grinding. As it got closer and closer, he realized that there was something very familiar about the hissing. The source of the noise was now only a couple of feet away from them. It kept grinding and hissing until Tommy realised, _oh no_.

Peeking out from the bolder, he saw it, a golem of Lord Zedd, a putty. It dragged its stone feet across the rocky ground. It limped along with its ghoulish frown and its dead, soulless, eyes.

 _This isn't good._ He dialed Jason on the communicator. "We' re at code red. We've got a putty down here," Tommy whispered.

"Get out now," Jason said.

The creature stumbled its way past them. They hopped over the boulder, and Zack ran back toward the entrance.

"Come on, Tommy we gotta go."

"Wait, if the the putties are down here, then that means Zedd already knows what's down here," Tommy said.

"Yeah, what's your point?"

"Zedd might have already found something."

"Well, maybe, but . . . "

"You go back to the rope, I'll go check this out," Tommy said.

"You crazy? I'm not gonna leave you down here."

Tommy didn't want to put Zack's life back in danger, but he couldn't disagree. He knew that a dark enclosed cave would be the worst place to run into a pack of putties. They quietly followed it. They tried to make sure that the putty didn't hear them. Step-by-step, they tried to keep up.

Eventually they were able see the putty at the very edge of what their night vision could capture. Tommy and Zack tried to stay least ten feet away. They also tried to step lightly on the ground. Fortunately, the grinding of the it's feet drowned out any noise they could spotted it making a left and noticed that there was this huge boulder nearby.

"Let's get an aerial view," Tommy said.

They climbed up the boulder quietly until they reached the top. The boulder was wide enough were they could continue to follow the putty from their vantage point. They kept up with the putty as grinded against the ground, picking up more and more speed as it moved, and they tried to follow it quickly without bringing attention to themselves.

They stopped as they saw the putty approach a group of others just like it, a pack of them. They hissed at one another in circle. First the one they were following hissed, then another one, then another one, then another one. But then, all the putties just hissed in unison in an organized matter.

"What are they doing?" Zack asked.

"I think, they're talking about what found," Tommy whispered.

The pack then moved forward. Tommy and Zack crawled above them. Tommy's communicator vibrated. Jason was getting antsy. What should the next move be? He knew the putties were leading him somewhere, but Jason might show up any minute. _He might mess everything up,_ he thought.

The pack met at the corner of two rock walls. They scratched at and dusted off the corner.

Tommy crawled to the very edge of the boulder, leaning. He squinted his eyes, activating his helmet's zoom lenses. The lenses zoomed in closer on the rock wall, but it was hard to see with all of them in the way.

He arched his back forward, and one of them moved so he could see something. He didn't know what it was. He saw it only for a second as another putty jumped in front of his view.

"What is it?" Zack asked.

"Maybe a—"

Tommy slipped.

He quickly grabbed on the boulder before he fell, but it was too late. The putties all snapped their heads to face Tommy. They all released a sinister growl that pierced Tommy's ear drums. They all lunged toward the boulder.

Tommy instinctively reached for the back of his belt, where he pulled on the handle for Saba, his trusty sword. Saba's blade materialized as he pulled the handle out. Tommy slashed at two putties in front of him.

The putties leapt at Tommy, one after another. Tommy tried his best to cut them down, but they were ganging up on him. Saba got stuck in a putty head, and as he tried to pull Saba out, two more of them jumped on top of Tommy.

He tried to shake them off, but two more jumped on him. The weight forced Tommy to get on his knees, and his fingers were slipping off of Saba's handle. One of the putties flung off of Tommy's back.

"Turn around!" Zack said.

Tommy turned his back toward Zack. He could feel the putties being pushed off of him him by Zack's axe-blaster. The blaster made the remaining ones hesitate long enough for Tommy to grab Saba and begin slicing them up.

They leapt at them again, almost three at a time. Zack would try to blast at least one down before Tommy could cut them in half. They started coming at them in fours now, and now they were inches from Tommy's face.

They grabbed Saba's blade and wrestled Tommy until he and Zack toppled over the side of the boulder. As they fell, Tommy tried to to time it so he could roll back on his back and keep fighting.

Tommy did manage to back on his feet, but he lost Saba and he had to resort to using his hands. Tommy tried to kick one in the head, while punching another. Tommy saw that Zack was having an easier time with his axe, but they became cornered against the boulder. More and more putties grabbed them and held them onto the ground. One turned its arm into a spiked club and raised it above Tommy's head.

The putty was shot away by a blast of red light. All of the putties turned and they saw the other four Power Rangers firing heavy laser blasts at them. They all retreated from the fire.

Jason walked up to Tommy and gave him Saba: "Let's get out of here, now."

"Wait," Tommy said.

"Now!" Jason said as he dragged Tommy out of the cave.

* * *

Almost from the second they beamed back into the Command Center, Tommy could feel the tension in the air. It was so strong that that not even Saba could slice through. Jason rapidly turned to face him.

"What did you think you were doing?' Jason asked.

Tommy stumbled to try to find an answer, he was usually good with on the spot questions in even the highest stake scenarios, but he couldn't think of anything.

"I gave you a direct order to leave, and yet you stayed and endangered your life," Jason said.

"We suspected that there might be something dangerous down there, and what do you know? Lord Zedd was after something in the cave. We need to go back down there, and I think we need to take another look at that tablet." Tommy said.

"I have had the E.S.B breathing down my neck for weeks," Jason said, "If we go back in there, or if we don't give the tablet back tomorrow, we might cause an interplanetary incident."

"That's their problem that they can't deal with us," Tommy said,"What about Zedd? Shouldn't that be the pryority?"

"Zedd might have been looking for something, but that doesn't mean that there is anything there. The other dig sites turned nothing. You should have left." Jason said.

"Is really that a risk worth taking?" Tommy said.

"Zack, did you see anything?" Jason asked.

Zack was caught by surprised, he was in the middle of drinking some water and almost spat some of it back out. Well, I didn't see anything besides some rocks. Tommy said he saw something."

"Really?" Jason turned back to Tommy, "What did you find?"

"I'm not sure actually, I just saw them gather up around something," Tommy said.

"Well, that's not very conclusive, is it?" Jason said.

"I'm telling you, Zedd is up to something," Tommy said.

"And I'm telling you that your behavior is not what being a ranger is about."

 _Enough of this._ Tommy stormed off.

* * *

 _I'm getting really sick of these rangers,_ Walker thought as he poured his coffee. _I don't know why the President insists that we need them. We are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. If anything, they practically ruined the dig site. All they do is snoop around, and yet, if we were to ask them for some information that may be important to the Earth's safety, they become silent. Disgusting._ Walker took a sip just as Shaw barged into the lounge.

"What is it now?" Walker said.

Shaw gasped and wheezed. "There's something wrong with the old man."

They ran down the hall, smoke billowing in the air. Forrester's cell door was torn off its hinges. Green fiery footprints tracked out of the cell.

"How the hell did this happen?" Walker said as he entered.

Forrester writhed and convulsed, slobbering all over the floor, kicking his legs into the air. His eye flashed from bright green, to purple, to red. "A whole new world!" he screamed. "A whole new world!"

"What's up with him?" Shaw asked.

Walker rubbed his lips. He only seen this a few times before by some exceptionally high powered U.E.O's. "He's been mindswiped."

Grabbing Forrester's head, Walker whispered to him. "Dr. Forrester, Dr. Forrester, can you understand me?"

"Jasmine!" Forrester screamed. "Jasmine!"

* * *

Tommy was sitting in the cave. He moved around the frozen putties,trying to make his way back to the corner where they were standing.

"Computer, increase brightness," Tommy said. The cave's dark interior slowly illuminated until it was as bright as day. The Holoroom was nice way to recreate situations in which one missed something.

He stood behind three putties by the corner. "Computer, erase," Tommy said. The three vanished, leaving only a black square in the wall.

The Computer could only recreate what the helmet saw, which left him with only a slightly pixelated black square on a rock, but Tommy did notice that the square was not just a square. It had a round top. He tried to think of something to make the picture clearer.

"Computer, adjust to scale."

The square than increased in size from the size of a phone, to the size of a smal floor tile. Looking at it closely, Tommy saw what it was, it was the perfect shape and size for the tablet from the museum. Luckily, they still had it until tomorrow morning.

Tommy grabbed his Power Coin from the round slot by the door and ran down the hallway to get to the main platform. As the door opened, He saw Jason talking to Zordon and ducked back into the hallway.

"I just don't know what to do," Jason said, "I always try to give him the benefit of the doubt. I even let him go into the cave because I thought he was onto something, but he always so reckless," Jason said.

"Do you believe this behavior will be detrimental to the team?" Zordon asked.

"I don't know. If he doesn't listen to me, then who will he listen to?"

"You know the Power Rangers can only truly function as one, as one unit, one organism," Zordon said.

"That's what I mean. What do I do with Tommy then? He's too important of an asset to the team," Jason said.

"You must do what you feel is right. You're the leader Jason, part of the responsibility is making these decisions. I have taught you everything you need to know," Zordon said.

Tommy closed the door, and back through the hallway. _He wouldn't believe me. He wouldn't want to if I told him,_ he thought. The only way Jason would understand was if he showed him, proved to him that he was right. _I'll show Jason that I'm even more than just a valuable asset to the team._

He walked into the vault room, where the Power Rangers kept technology and mystical items too powerful for mankind. Tommy went through one drawer after another trying to find it, but then he did. He took the tablet.

* * *

Jason stood outside of the Holoroom. He was nervous, but he knew what he was going to do was important. It might be waste of time, but it's always worth a shot. Jason figured if he tried to have an honest talk with Tommy, then maybe things could go back on track.

He opened the door, it was empty, so Jason wandered down the hallway.

"Tommy, Tommy, where are you?" he said as went from room to room. He kept on going until he got to the vault. The opened box laid on the floor.

"Tommy!"

* * *

Tommy wandered through the cave. It was surprising how the lax the security was. There were only a few E.S.B agent watching the perimeter that he sneaked by. After that, there was only one sleeping guard outside the entrance of the cave.

He had made it back to where the putties were, and found the corner between the rock walls. Rubbing his hand along the wall, his fingers felt a slight hollow in the wall.

It was just the right size for the tablet. Carefully, he slipped the tablet into the the hollow of the rock. Once it was in place, he pushed hard against the tablet. _It's gotta do something._

Nothing. No matter how hard he pressed against the tablet, it seemed ineffective. There was no secret trap door, no teleportation beam, nothing at all.

He observed the tablet. Dome of the little stone squares on it were more raised than the others. Pressing in on of the raised ones,It sunk into the tablet like button and the symbol on it glowed. He pressed all the raised symbols one by one, and they all illuminated. He reached to press the last symbol.

"What do you think you're doing?" a voice called from behind Tommy. _Oh, man._ He looked behind him and saw Jason, Trini, and Zack, morphed and with their arms crossed.

"Tommy I've had it with—"

Before Jason could finish, Tommy knew he couldn't waste this opportunity and he quickly slammed his fist on to the final symbol. The cave was consumed by a bright flash. Tommy closed his eyes. When he opened them, rockwall and the tablet were unchanged. The buttons were still pressed but there didn't seem to be anything different at all.

"Tommy. . ." Trini said.

Turning to them, he saw the rangers gazing at a gigantic pyramid that loomed over them. The cave was gone, all that remained was a black void that covered the sky. The wall the held tablet was floating in mid air.

Walking ahead of them, he was in awe of what he was looking at. His eyes scanned over all the worn out stone buildings that have rotten away and gave into vegetation growth. The pyramid stood solid and strong. It was beautiful and it was time to rub it Jason's face.

"See? See? I told you! I told you there was something here, and what do you know? We found the motherload," Tommy said as he pointed at the various could tell through Jason's helmet that he was still in awe of the place.

"You still disobeyed orders," Jason said, his visor was still looking up at the gigantic pyramid.

"What are we gonna do now Jason? Leave?" Tommy said.

Jason finally tilted his head back down, and after a minute, he finally said: "Alright, we'll explore for a couple of minutes, but we still have to talk when we get back."

"Fine by me," Tommy said.

The rangers surveyed the ghost city. All of the buildings were dilapidated and partially missing, and they were filled with vines and the occasional small tree. The ranger poked their heads until to the windows to see if they could find anything. Though, it was obvious nothing would be there.

"So where do you think we are?" Jason asked Billy via the communicator.

"Well, since your helmet reads that there's oxygen in your area, it's unlikely that you're on another planet. I can only theorize that you guys were transported into a pocket dimension created by the civilization," Billy said.

"Pocket dimension? That would require some pretty advanced tech, and it's still running," Jason said.

Tommy smiled in his helmet. This was exactly the proof he needed. Finally, he would be able to get Jason off of his back for good, now that they found something this big.

The rangers arrived at the edge of the city and ascended up the stone stairs to the top of the pyramid. While the pyramid had a staircase similar to the ones on the Mayan Pyramids that Tommy saw in his text books, it had a pointed top similar to the egyptian pyramids. The climb to the top of felt like i ten minutes as the rangers carefully watched their step to make sure they wouldn't fall. The steps were tall and steep.

They arrived at the top, where they could see that the tip of the pyramid was actually a separate piece supported by columns above their heads. They walked in and saw that the floor and walls were covered in tiles with symbols engraved onto them. Tommy saw four doorways on each wall around him.

"We have a lot of options here, split up?" Tommy asked.

"No," Jason said,"We don't know where we are going. We'll pick one path today, and we might explore it more another time."

"I guess that's—"

The pyramid shaked, and the columns began to sink inside the floor. They all tried to run for the stairs but a wall raised over them as the ceiling sunk down, sealing them in.

Trini banged her fists against the wall. "What do we—" The floor beneath her pulled away and she fell through into a dark pit.

"Trini!" Jason ran for the pit, but another wall come down from the ceiling. Tommy grabbed and pulled Jason's head out of it's path.

"Quick where's Zack?" Tommy asked. They looked over and saw Zack was standing on a piece of floor that was rising.

"Run!" Tommy yelled.

Zack slid off of his little platform before it slammed into the ceiling. Tommy saw Zack run toward them, jumping over the rising floor tiles. A huge length of wall slid between them and Zack like a shower curtain. It slammed shut before Zack could make it.

 _No! No!_ They pressed themselves against the wall, pushing against it. Jason activated the communicator. "Billy, we ne—"

The floor gave in under Tommy.

* * *

Above him, the trap door slid back into place. Tommy tired not to freak out as he pulled himself off the floor. Sure, it was totally his fault that three of his friends may be six feet under, both literally and metaphorically, but that was an average day. He had to keep calm, and take note of his surroundings.

At the edge of the stone room, stood a pair of double doors with ring handles. _The eye_ , the same eye that the tablet showed him, hung above the doors. There was no choice. He had to check it out.

By pulling on the ring, the door screeched open. He stepped inside the round room. _Déjà vu._ It was the exact same room from his vision, huge, round, and with and object in the center. He could almost see the shadowy people again.

Walking to the center, he could make out the object. It was a pedestal with a handle sticking out of the top. _Curious, very curious._ He wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled. It slid out.

It was a sword, and a scepter, and an axe all at the same time. A jewel laid on top of a long shaft. A serrated blade protected from the shaft and curved around the jewel. It was made of stone, but it was surprisingly light. He rolled it around in his hand. Something clicked. Turning it over, he found his thumb pressed against a small stone button.

The jewel pulsated, and the blade rotated around it. Tingles ran down Tommy's hand, through his arm, and into his head. The blade rotated faster, and faster around the jewel. The room blurred.

 _Flash!_

He dropped the object and fell onto his hands and knees. He kept his eyes shut tight for a second, but then opened them. His vision was slightly blurry, but he was able to stand.

He grabbed the nearby wall to help himself up. Whatever that thing did must have pushed him back to the edge of the room. His vision was still blurry, but he could see something was different. There was something else in the room by the pedestal.

He walked slowly back to the center of the room, closer to the thing. As he got closer and closer his vision became clearer. When he was six inches away from the thing, Tommy could see clearly what was in the room with him, _himself._

Shocked, he stepped back. _What is going on?_ He walked around the other Tommy. This other Tommy was frozen in the moment he pulled out the object from the pedestal.

 _But I dropped it_ , he thought. Tommy looked behind him to find the object laying on the floor. So, there were two of him, and two of the object.

He object off of the floor. _Maybe it has a reset button._ As he rolled it around his hands, the blade began to rotate again. And with one bright pulse from the jewel, the room's dark walls illuminated into bright white light.

"Are you having any difficulties, Mr. Oliver?"

He turned toward the voice. Out of the white light, came a blue shadow. It shaped itself, herself. It was a lady, a lady with golden hair and porcelain skin. Sparkles shined of her blue dress. Fluffy, feathery wings stretched out of each of her sides.

"How may I be of assistance?" she whispered.

His jaw tried to shape the words. "How? What? Who— Who are you? And how do you know my name?"

"I am the Guardian of the Gate," she said,"I know you because I know all."

"Huh, do you know what this is?" he asked, waving the object.

"It is the key," she said.

"The key to. . .?"

"To the Gate," she said.

"I figured that," he said, "but what is that?"

"The Gate is above, through, and between all."

"Okaayyy." Tommy really hated mystical cryptic nonsense, but that was always part of the job. He learned a long time ago to just cut to the chase, even if the mysterious entities didn't. "So, why am I over there," he said, pointing to the frozen Tommy.

"Because that is where you were," she said, "You are not there anymore. You are somewhere else now. You are with me."

"What?! No wayyy. . ." he said with a sigh.

"Yes, I cannot tell a lie," she said.

"Alright, what can you say?"

"Everything. Ask and I must answer," she said.

"So, you're like Siri or something?" he said, scratching his helmet.

"If that helps," she said.

 _Alright, I've had enough._ "Okay, you're a genie-fairy-thing, whatever. Does this key have a reset button?"

She glided over to him. "No, you are the 'reset button'." Her hand reached for the key. Weirdly enough, it was like there was this flexible wall, this invisible film between the two of them, like saran wrap. Her hand became wrapped in this film as she touched the key. She guided his hand and lifted the key above his head. "You are not where you were. You are here, and here is everything you can envision."

The blade rotated again. And like he was standing on the tide at the beach, Tommy felt himself being dragged, pulled even to the frozen. His body tingled as he was sucked into his twin.

 _Flash!_

And he was back where he started, standing by the pedestal, holding the key. _Now this some crazy stuff,_ he thought, _I can only imagine if Zedd got his hands on this. I need to find the others, and fast._

The building began to shake.

As he ran out of the room, Tommy darted his head around. An archway lifted out of the ground and he went for it. Rushing down the hallway, a huge mass bashed against his helmet, knocking him back. Shaking it off, he realized he just bumped into Zack.

"Tommy!" Zack said, "Hey boyo, waaat chucker yer got dare?" He pointed to the key.

"I'll explain later, where are the others?"

"I think I found Trini. Follow me!" Zack said as he bolted.

They ran a few more feet through the narrow hallway until it ended in another open area. Zack pointed to a grate in the ground. Tommy looked through the squares in the grate and saw Trini's yellow uniform. "Trini?!" he yelled.

"Present. . ." She sounded like she was far away.

"Zack's gonna blast this open, and you're gonna climb up here, okay?"

"That's a pretty nice plan, hurry," she said.

Zack materialized his axe blaster and destroyed the grate in a giant blue fire ball.

"Okay Zack, you be on the look out for Jason, I'll keep an eye on her."

"Got it." Zack ran to the doorway on the other side of the room.

The building started shaking again and Tommy heard a loud a crack. He looked over his shoulder to see Zack stuck under a metal wall. He ran to him and saw that only his legs were stuck under the wall. He tried to pull Zack out, but he was heavy. Zack was panting pretty hard, obviously trying not to scream.

"Tommy, help!" he heard Trini scream.

"Climb Trini! Climb!" Tommy yelled out.

Zack began crying out as the wall started pushed into his legs. Zack's armor sparked as it tried to resist being crushed. Tommy put his leg on the wall to try and get more leverage to pull Zack out.

* * *

Trini saw the wall behind her coming toward her slowly. _I hate my life,_ she thought as the wall in front of her moved in and out in cube-shaped sections. Her time to act was now. She grabbed a cube, and then another, then another, trying to quickly move from one to another before it popped back into the wall. She made it to two feet under the grate. The cube she grabbed snapped back into the wall and she slammed back to the ground.

The oncoming wall was now three feet away from her. _Get up!_ She quickly grabbed another cube and climbed even faster, jumping from one part of the wall to another.

The wall was now a foot away. She grabbed the edge of a sunk cube, but it quickly popped out and pressed her against the oncoming wall, squeezing her chest. The cube snapped back into place and she climbed through the grate.

* * *

Tommy tried as hard as he could to pull Zack out, but he wasn't gonna budge. Trini ran to them, grabbed Zack's shoulders and pulled. They tugged as hard as they could. There was another hard slam. Tommy looked over and saw Jason climbing out of a newly formed vent. Jason ran over and grabbed Zack. Together they pulled Zack from out of the wall.

* * *

Exhausted, they lumbered into another open room decorated with statues of some kind of warriors, surprisingly human shaped warriors. Tommy leaned against on of the statues, observing the key.

"So, what did you find?" Jason asked.

"I'm not sure exactly, but whatever it is, I think we should get it back to the Command Center before—"

Tommy sunk into the statue, almost falling to the floor. "What th—?" Hestood up and looked at his back. There was some bizarre substance on it. He looked over at the dent he made in the statue. It was like it was made of clay. Tommy stuck his fingers into it and scooped some out. He rolled the clay with his fingers. The clay crawled off of his hand.

"Crap. . ."

The statues exploded into a wave of clay that grabbed them. It started to wrap around Tommy, but he was able to draw out Saba and cut through it.

The wiggling mass of clay quickly wrapped itself around the others and began to reshape itself into a man shape. Tommy ran over and sliced off one of its forming arms, and then slashed at it's stomach, again and again.

Something wrapped around Tommy, forcing him to drop Saba. A snake? Yes, but it wasn't just any snake. It was _his snake._

He tried pull his arms away from his sides, but the snake restricted tighter and tighter. It shocked him, sending electricity through his suit into his body. His muscles seized up and he fell over.

Though dizzy, he saw three figures approach him, two putties and someone else in a cloak. The one in the cloak stared at him for a moment, observing him as he squirmed. He crouched down to Tommy.

"My child, are you in pain?" It asked with a very familiar mechanical whisper.

His heart raced. This wasn't a dream. This was actually happening. Tommy was once again face-to-face with Lord Zedd.

Zedd unclicked the button holding his cloak together, he slipped off the left side, then the other. It dropped to the floor, revealing Zedd's bloody red muscles encased in his silver exoskeleton. As he breathed, the liquid in the tubes surrounding his body bubbled and gargled.

Tommy stared into Zedd's red visor, a red void didn't reflect any light. Zedd turned his head to the side, where he used his silver talons to slowly scratch and claw at the contours of his exposed brain.

"You don't know the meaning of the word," Zedd said.

Tommy shifted his eyes away from him. Jason, Trini, and Zack were caged the stomach of a tall putty. Reluctantly, his eyes shifted back to Zedd. "What do you want?" he asked with a cough.

"I just want what's coming to me, what was promised to me," Zedd said, "I have longed for this temple and it's secrets. It was my quest, my destiny. When I sent the Vlork to retrieve the tablet, I thought my quest had come to an end, but destiny has a way of challenging you, of placing things in your way." His visor illuminated. A wavy image of Forrester screaming flashed on it.

 _Oh no. . ._

"The mortal posed a challenge that I turned into a greater victory," Zedd said, "I knew you must of taken the tablet from him, and I knew you couldn't resist the urge to follow the lead. I baited you, my child, and I let you help me fulfill my destiny."

A putty handed the key to him. He rolled it around in his hands. "My ancestors could only of imagine. . . I can only imagine. Do you know?"

Dazed, Tommy managed to spit something out. "How would I know if you don't know? Zeddy, you ain't very bright."

Slowly, Zedd tilted his head sideways, and snapped his fingers. Another shock ran through Tommy's body, stabbing into his burning muscles. Zedd grabbed his chin and pulled it closer to his face. "Child, I know you very well and I know you when you are lying to me."

"I have nothing for you," Tommy said.

"Well then . . . " Zedd snapped his fingers again.

Tommy closed his eyes, anticipating another shock, but nothing came. Instead, he heard the sounds grinding metal. Tommy opened his eyes to see that the cage stomach of the puttywas shrinking, crushing Jason, Zack, and Trini. He could hear the three of them struggle as they were tossed and turned in its belly.

"Don't tell him anything!" Jason said.

Tommy grinded his teeth together, this was the situation he was afraid of the most. He knew inside that Zedd had no reason to stop hurting after he got what he was looking for, but there had he could do?

"Now child," Zedd said, "are you going to tell me?"

He struggled for words: " I uh, I uh….."

"Tommy," Jason called out, "for once in your life listen to me. Don't tell him anything! Not a. . . " The cage crushed in on him.

"Silence!" Zedd said before turning back to Tommy. He waved the key. "What is this? You must tell me! You have no choice!"

Zack and Trini gagged for life as the cage shrunk. _I guess I really don't,_ hethought. Tommy took a deep breath."Okay," he said, "I'll tell you." He took another breath. "It's a really old can opener."

Zedd tilted his head to the side and snapped his fingers. The cage began to grow back. "Oh well child, if you don't want to tell me, then I'll find out myself."

Zedd turned to face the rangers in the cage. Tommy's hands began to shake. He hadn't seen this coming and he hoped Zedd wouldn't find the button, but he did. The blade rotated again. Zedd laughed as he pointed the key at the rangers.

"Well children," Zedd said, "it was fun, but as Zordon once said to me, nothing lasts forever." He laughed again as the jewel pulsated a red light.

A pink arrow flew into the ground and exploded into a puff of pink smoke. Tommy could hear the sound of metal clang on the floor, and the sound of Lord Zedd coughing. Flashes of blue light shot over Tommy's head, creating red fireball explosions ten feet away from him.

Zedd's snake unwrapped itself from Tommy and shot into the smoke. Billy appeared from behind Tommy and helped him unto his knees. We have to go," Billy said, firing two shots from his blaster.

"Wait." Tommy ran into the smoke, trying to lay low. He crawled on the floor, under the energy blasts and explosions. He couldn't see anything. The smoke was too thick. He felt around on the floor until his hand hit something. He got the key.

A metal boot cracked into Tommy eye visor, knocking him on his back. Zedd stood over him, his snake slithering from his shoulders to his hand. The snake morphed into his silver staff.

Zedd tapped Tommy's chest with his staff, and a purple energy field kept Tommy from getting up. "Who do you think you are to take my birthright away from me?" he asked.

Tommy pushed his back muscles as hard his could, but the field wouldn't give. "Zedd, did you ever consider the fact that you just suck?" Tommy said.

Zedd lifted the spiked bottom of his staff, but the energy field didn't disappear. He grabbed his staff with both and hands, and green energy flowed down to the spiked bottom. He pointed it towards Tommy's head.

An arrow flew into Zedd's arm. The energy field disappeared and Tommy rolled over and grabbed the key. Zedd pulled the arrow out with growl. He aimed the purple glowing staff at Tommy.

"Enough!" Zedd yelled. A flash red light exploded behind him and Zedd fell over.

Out from the smoke Billy arrived with Jason, Trini, and Zack. "Let's go, it's shifting again," Jason said.

The rangers ran out of the smoke cloud, meeting Kim on the outside. They ran to the doorway that was rapidly sinking into the ground. All six of them jumped through to the other side.

All the rangers climbed to their feet. Zack pointed off into the distance. "Hey look, light! I think that's the way out of here."

The temple began to shake again, only more violently than it had before. Even the ground beneath them was trembling. Pieces of the ceiling fell.

"It's gonna collapse, move out!" Jason said.

Tommy and the others ran as fast as they could, trying to jump around the falling debris. Tommy could see the light coming closer and closer. A big boulder dropped in front of Tommy and he leapt over it, barely being able to get back on his feet so he could run again.

They jumped through the exit. Tommy looked up to see they were at the base of the pyramid. The top of the pyramid collapsed into the the piece below it, crushing the staircase. And then that piece fell into the one beneath that one. And so on, until only the base remained.

"We did it!" Zack said.

All of the rangers gathered to talk about which of them did the best job, it was a tradition of theirs whenever they barely scrape by a horrible situation. Among the commotion, Tommy noticed something.

"Hey, where's Jason?" he asked.

They all looked around to see where he was. Why wouldn't he be there with them? Tommy's eyes flew wide open. He dropped the key.

"No. No."

Tommy looked back at the destruction before him. _He didn't make it._

He ran to the opening where they escaped, now covered in rocks and rubble. He dug through the rocks, trying to find him. Each rock he turned away made another one fall into its place. _No, this can't be happening._ Tommy dug through the rock for minutes upon minutes before Billy and Zack dragged him away.

"Tommy, stop! That's not going to help," Zack said.

"Let me go, I can do this." He wriggled and writhed out of their hold.

"Tommy it is over, he is gone," Billy said.

"No." Tommy broke free from their grasp only to fall onto his knees. He tore his helmet off. His eyes felt someone had just stabbed both of them. "I killed him. . . I killed him. . ."

* * *

Tommy sat by himself a couple of feet away from the rangers. They were at a lost for words. He hear Zack and the girls silently sobbing together. Billy wasn't much of a crier, but Tommy could always hear it in his voice. Billy had that voice when tried to dial Zordon on the communicator.

"Zordon? I have some bitter news to share."

There was only static on the other side, with a background noise that might have been Zordon responding. Tommy couldn't help but wonder how Zordon would react. What happen to the rangers before them was always a touchy subject for him.

His hands were still shaking. It was unreal. The Jason Scott that he trained with, went to school with, and hung out with was gone. His stomach twisted and turned. _I didn't always agree with the meathead,_ he thought, _but I didn't want him to die. Jason is dead and I killed him_.

He turned to his left. The key stood untouched on the ground. _Everything you can envision_. He stood up and slowly walked to it. The other rangers disappeared to him, he didn't know what they were saying or doing. Their voices faded off into the distance. The pushed him toward it, like a magnet.

He grabbed the key, activating it. The blade spun.

The muscles in his arm felt like they were being torn apart from an outside force. His head experienced the worst pain as every synapse in his brain fired at once. The entire world he was living in was dragged away until he was in a purely white void.

"Think about what you desire," Guardian whispered.

In a white flash, Tommy was back in the tunnel that he and the rangers just escaped from. Everybody around him walked in slow motion. He walked, no, he hovered to the back, past the other version of Tommy jumping over the boulder.

Tommy floated all the way to the back where he saw Jason. Tommy looked up and saw a huge cube of stone already fallen out of place and about to hit Jason right on the head.

"What do I do?" Tommy asked.

"See it, be it," she said.

Tommy put his hand on the stone. Instantly, the object glowed with a white light. His eyes began to burn slightly, but it was like he could he see all the particles moving in the stone.

It was intuitive now, Tommy didn't need to ask anymore. He knew how to use the key to reverse time and get everybody to walk back a couple of feet in fast motion, and then in slow motion again.

Now, Jason was a good ten feet away from the stone. Tommy focused on the stone and saw all the particles in it move down to the bottom, forcing the stone to fall to the ground. He sped up time to see Jason jump over the stone.

 _Flash!_

And he was back outside the pyramid with the other rangers. Jason stood next to him. "Well, I like think we all played our own part, right Tommy?" Jason asked.

Tommy stumbled. "Well, I don't know if I did much."

"You kidding? Coming here was your idea, and because of you Lord Zedd didn't get his hands on whatever that thing is," Jason said, pointing to the key

"I guess I was kinda right, but also kinda not," Tommy said. Jason smiled. He seemed to have picked up on everything Tommy wanted say from that sentence.

"Let's go home," Jason said.

* * *

Daniel lined up his shot. Carefully, he tapped the orange ball with his putter. Somehow, the ball rolled of the green matt and went underneath the office chair. He sighed. _I spent how many years in college, just to do this all day?_ he thought. Working at NASA wasn't nearly as exciting as he hoped it would be.

A red light flashed on one of the monitors with an irritating beep. As he went to retrieve the ball, he called to Carl. "Hey kid, would you take care of that?"

"Surrrreee," Carl managed to say with the pizza in his mouth.

Getting on his old knees, Daniel managed to get to the ball. "So, what is it this time?" he asked. "Better not be another fly!"

Carl pulled a paper out of the printer and gazed at it, wide eyed. He gulped down his bit of pizza. "Dr. Ottoman?!"

 _Weird, the kid never calls me doctor,_ Daniel thought as he walked to him. He pulled the paper away from him. It was today's starfield check.

Carl poked his greasy finger at the starfield. He pointed at the big white spot that occupied the center of the field. _Is that a black hole? No. The shape is all wrong._

"Now, I'm not an expert or anything." Carl shoved another slice of pizza into his mouth. "But, I don't think that's suppose to be there."

* * *

As he waited for Zack to get back with the ice cream, Tommy stood at his favorite spot, The Power Rangers Dedication Fountain. It was glorious. Each of the rangers were represented in a tall stone statue, standing over a crystal clear fountain. The town made it for them after major battle victory over Lord Zedd. He was amazed by how much detail they had put into. They must have only had pictures to work with, but they still managed to recreate each of their ranger armor perfectly. It kinda felt weird, but good to know that Tommy would always be a world wide legend.

Then he saw it. On any other day, he probably wouldn't have noticed it, but today he couldn't help but see it on the statue.

"Hey Tommy, I got your favorite." Zack returned with two ice cream cones, three scoops of chocolate for himself and two scoops of mint chocolate chip for him.

"Thanks." He grabbed the cone and ran

"Is something wrong, man?" Zack asked.

"No." Of course there was, but he just wanted to forget about it. "Lets just go back to your place. We got studying to do."

Tommy followed Zack, hoping the taste of mint could help him forget what he saw. On Jason's statute, the head was consumed by cracks.


	2. Billy and Zack's Morphenomenal Lunch

Bile was rising in Billy's throat. He despised being in cars. No, he loathed being in them. Unless he was rewiring its circuits to make it fly, he didn't like being anywhere near a vehicle. Operating a titanic robotic Triceratops was elementary. Sitting in an old repurposed Volkswagen Beetle while Zack talked about pizza, that was difficult.

"I'm tellin' ye Donkay," Zack said in his pseudo-Scottish accent. He loved that accent, Billy did not. "Kali's has loch th' best pineapple pizza yoo'd ever hae," he said, turning the beetle onto the abandoned road in the middle of grassy nowhere. He swore up and down that it was the best way to get there.

"I despise pineapple on pizza," Billy said, holding a deathgrip on the roof handle.

Zack's pseudo-Scottish accent seemed to be slipping into his phony-Russian. "Zat's bekause you, and everrryone else in zis kountrrry, has been brrrainvashed to rrresist mind-bending, sveet and savorrry delicious avesomeness."

Rolling his eyes, Billy turned his attention to the grassy field that zoomed by them in the window. Billy never understood Zack's propensity for the most bizarre meals imaginable by man. He was attracted to utter monstrosities like Ernie's "Breakfast Manwich", in which a sloppy joe is drowned in maple syrup, or Zack's own homemade shakes, which could range from peanut butter and bacon shake to the sugar cookie and pepperoni pizza smoothe. Thinking about this while looking out the moving window was a terrible idea. Billy winced as he tried to keep in the acid in his throat down.

"But all of their pizza, everything they have is simply. . . " Zack leaned in close to his face. ". . .Morphenomenal!"

 _Oh, not this again._ He just stared at the floor and hoped he would give up on it.

"Oh come on, man," Zack said.

"When are you going to realize that word is not going to be a catchphrase that we use?" Billy asked.

"It will, man! I got a good feeling about it, a lucky feeling about, and you know how lucky I can be sometimes," Zack said.

"Sure, however, I will take intelligence over luck anyday, and intelligence tells me that catchphrase is going to die," Billy said.

"Whatever, an' woods ye relax ower thaur?" Zack must have noticed him death gripping the bar. "Everythin' is gonna be fine. We're gonna gang thaur an' hae a wee-nice, normal, lunch."

Billy's glasses flew off his face as they were knocked downhill. Gripping the dash, he seized his muscles as the beetle hopped down the bumpy grassy field, sloshing his brain around in his skull. He swallowed his bile.

Sliding the beetle to its side, Zack tugged at the wheel, grinding it to a halt. He squirmed and jumped in his seat, checking on it condition. "Oh man," he said, "you think the bug's gonna be okay?"

Billy recovered his glasses from under the dash. "Yes, I do believe it has been through worse scenarios," he said,remembering the time it dropped from the sky at ninety feet because Zack forgot to charge the flying circuits batteries. That was the last time Billy let him fly the car.

"What hit us?" Zack asked.

In the rearview mirror, a streak of smoke stretched across the sky. Scanning the sky, Billy saw the smoke reach far beyond the grass in front of them. A meteoroid? No, the trail did not match what would be expected from one. It had to be a. . .

"Last one out is a rotten peso, señor!" Zack hopped out the beetle and and slid across the hood.

"Zac—" Billy's growling stomach interrupted him. _I do not have the energy required for this,_ he thought. _Hopefully, this time it will be a simple journey._

Trekking through the grass, he eventually found Zack crawling underneath a white wooden fence, the smoke puffing up from behind it. Climbing over the fence, he saw it, a grey metal ship laying in a crater of burning crops. He stepped over next to Zack, observing the site.

"Boy, I'd hate to be old mcdonald right now," Zack said, kicking a flaming carrot.

Soot and dents covered the entire ship. The front windshield ( _Bizarre that it is universally deemed a "windshield", even though there is no wind in space,_ Billy thought.) was cracked. Rough estimate placed its size to be the same as a medium sized van. Obscured by the soot, he could barely make out some red letters painted on the side of it. The writing inscribed something along the lines of: _—arden Special Deliveries._

"It appears we were impacted by a derelict ship," Billy said.

"Derelicts? I hate those guys!"

Billy just rubbed his temples. "No, Zack. That is not what that m—"

Swinging open, the ship's door released a little staircase onto the dirt. Without hesitation, they both ran behind the ship. Poking his head out from the ship's nose, Billy saw the figure emerge from the smoke walk onto the open field.

Holding a blaster in one hand and a silver briefcase in the other, a man in spacesuit crouched down onto the open field, placing the case in front of him. But was it in a spacesuit? The shape of the helmet wasn't correct for withstanding the pressures of space. Was it a hazmat suit? It was hard to tell from looking at the figure's back. The figure leaned forward as electronic beeps seemed to be emitting from the case. The figure pulled the case open. Eyes peeled, Billy leaned over to see what was in the case.

 _Snap!_ A twig broke beneath his foot.

The figure whipped around and fired at him. The red rays zoomed over his head as Billy dropped himself to the dirt. In the corner of his eye, the figure slammed its fist on its belt buckle and vanished into red light, taking the case with it.

Zack pulled him off the ground and brushed him off. "Oh, what did we just walk into?"

BIlly wiped off his glasses with his shirt. "I'm afraid there is only of finding out."

Cautiously, they climbed up the stairs leading to interior of the ship. The nauseous smell of burning rotten eggs stroke into Billy's nostrils. He covered his face as he peered around in the inside of the ship. "Keep an eye out for any stragglers," he said.

A gooey, sloppy wet noise smushed on behind him. "I don't think I have to," Zack muttered under his breath. Billy looked over his shoulder.

Long slow drips of blue slime come off of Zack's sneakers. The slime dripped onto a large puddle of goo that covered the floor. "Yuck! Aw man!" Zack said as he desperately tried to wipe the slime on his shoe off with the side of the ship. "What is this stuff anyway?"

Scanning his eyes over the puddle, Billy saw that all the slime seemed to be seeping out from one direction, from the—

"Oh my. . ." Billy pointed over to where it lead. The slime seeped out from a chair soaked in it. If there was any doubt of what the slime was, it was cast out when he spotted the severed blue hand hanging off the control stick by the chair.

"Oh. . . that's just wrong, man. Now I feel bad," Zack said.

Billy winced as he saw smoke emanating from the hand, the blue sheen of its skin still shining, except for one black spot on it, probably a birthmark. Billy rubbed his temples as he came to his conclusion. _We are looking a murder scene,_ he thought, _and it has crashed into our laps._

He grabbed Zack's shoulders. "Alright, we need to contact Zordon bef—" Before he could finish, Billy noticed a red light emanating from his hands, feeling pins and needles run through them. Zack's confused face started to glow red too.

 _Flash!_

* * *

The red light dimmed, and its place was orange daylight. Eyes widened, Billy saw the shimmering silver city before him. Tall skyscrapers reached up above the sky as flying cars zoomed around them. His gaze was caught by a billboard jutting out awkwardly from the side of a building. The billboard read out in colorful letters design to look like crayon: _Clones "R" Us_.

A red fireball puffed out as flying car crashed into the sign.

Zack bumped up against Billy's shoulder, his arms behind his back. "Billy I don't think we are in Kan—"

"Move!" a voice called out. It was in that moment that Billy realized that his arms were restrained behind his back. Next to him, Zack struggled and tugged away from a purple insectoid in a grey suit.

Over his shoulder, Billy saw another purple insectoid in a fedora behind him. The insectoid lifted the brim of his hat, exposing his four orange eyes. "What are you looking at, pinky!" It yelled.

"Oh come on, guys! I just wanted some pizza!" Zack said as the creatures turned them around to face a glass building. They were pushed up some concrete stairs leading up to a door. Billy spotted a sign on the door as they were shoved inside. It read: _Alive Garden: Simply The Best Cuisine in all of Delta-Vegas!_

"Zazar!" the insect behind Billy screamed as he and his friend tugged them around through the clothed dining tables.

Billy couldn't help but stare at the restaurant's patrons as they stared back at him. All of them, from the three eyed frog, to the gigantic pink jellyfish, to the red feathered reptilian-man, looked up from their intestine spaghetti and blue rivoli to see Billy and Zack being dragged by them. Billy swore the rivoli itself was looking at him funny as well.

They were pushed through the door into the kitchen, were a grumpy looking purple insectoid with a red mustache and a apron awaited them."You two morons!" it screamed, "We take care of business in the back! Not front of our paying customers!"

"Sorry Zazar, we kinda in a rush," said the bug behind Zack.

Zazar (Billy guessed that was his name.) ripped off his apron and hissed at them. "Just put them in the freezer, and help me explain this to our guest!"

"Who's gonna watch them?" the bug behind Billy asked.

Zazar snapped his head to the back of the room. "Remus!" he screamed, "Get over here you little imp! I have a job even you can't screw up."

Billy and Zack were tied to a couple of chairs with a silver chain wrapped around them, their backs facing each other. The purple insectoids left a green, frail, insectoid to watch over them.

"Gross," the green insectoid said in a squeaky, almost pubescent voice,"this is so gross. We're keeping these dirty humans were put our food." The bug wiped his hands with a little napkin.

"I resent that!" Zack said.

"Don't speak. In fact, try not to breath." The green insect pulled out a tiny spray can from his white jacket and sprayed the space around him, "Do you have any idea, how many germs there are on earth? It's insane they brought you here."

The insect dropped the can. "Oh, not again," he said as he kneeled over, trying to pick it up. He inched the tips of his fingers close to the can. . .

"Ew! No!" he said, pulling his fingers away.

He inched his fingers back to the can.

"Ew! No!" He pulled his fingers away again.

He inched his fingers back to the can. . .

 _This is just sad_ , Billy thought as this scene repeated three more times. Zack must have been thinking the same thing, because spoke to the bug to get him to stop."Your name's Remus, right?" Zack asked.

"Yeah," he said, pulling out another napkin and wiping his hands. Nervously, his head ticked around the freezer, like someone would jump at him at any moment.

"Okay Remus, why exactly did they pick you to watch us?" Zack asked.

"They always do," Remus said.

"Why?" Billy asked.

"Because my daddy told me he doesn't care if I live or die."

The purple came back into the freezer, rolling a T.V. in front of them and adjusting a microphone on top of the screen before turning it on. They screen's picture fizzled before showing the image of a fatter purple insect in a brown business suit and fedora.

"Greetings," the fat insect said, "I regret that I cannot oversee your punishment in person, apologies. My name is Xion, Xion Derelict of the Delta-Vegas' Derelicts."

"Told you. . ." Zack whispered.

"What?" Billy said, raising an eyebrow. "How—"

"Silence!" Xion shouted, "I would like to keep things simple. Can you please tell me and my boys where the Eye of Vox is?"

"Nevuurr done heard av it," Zack said.

"Oh really?" Xion said, "Because it seems odd that on his way home from a trip to the Napoleon Bank one of my men was murdered and his cargo missing, while you two were the only ones spotted at the scene!"

Zazar went in close to Billy's face. "Admit it, you killed him!"

"Killed who?" Billy asked.

"You killed **KAH-PLU-FLUK**!" Zazar said with a guttural noise he made from the back of his throat.

It was best to tread this issue carefully. "Listen gentlemen," Billy said, "me and my friend here have honestly no idea who you are, and what this all about. We just found the ship on our planet, that is all."

"Well if that is the case," Xion said,"then maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement." Xion snapped his fingers. The insects unwrapped them, only to snap a metal bracelet on each of their wrists.

"We should work together, if you ever want to see these things again," Xion said as Zazar held up a plastic bag with their morphers and communicators inside.

"Hey, that's our stuff!" Zack said before a insect placed a blaster gently on his temple.

"I don't know what kind of policemen you are," Xion said, "but I know them when I smell them, and I expect payment from them. Whether it be in the form of the Eye or your little trinkets."

Billy looked down to see red numbers on the bracelet flash: _5:00:00_.

"You have five hours to find what was lost to me. If you find it, we'll give your little trinkets back. If not. . . I at least hope you're nowhere near by restaurant when it happens," Xion said with a laugh.

Zazar pulled a pen shaped trigger from his jacket. He raised his thumb over the red button.

"Wait! Please, there has to be a more logical way," Billy said

"Your time begins. . ." Zazar's thumb lowered over the trigger.

Remus busted into the freezer, panting. "What do you want now you imp?" Zazar said, raising his thumb back up.

"I think we've got an upset customer out here," Remus said, out of breath.

"Is somebody complaining about my Rizzoli again!" Zazar said.

"Not exactly," Remus said before he was shoved aside. In his place, stood a tall human in a black tuxedo. Calmly and without expression, the man gazed at the scene, scanning everyone with his cold, blue eyes.

The Derelicts pulled out their blasters from every pocket imaginable "What do you want?!" Xion said.

Whipping it out of his tux, the man pulled out a blaster and fired. Xion's television shattered as the red energy blast flew through it, forming a crater in the wall.

Billy hit the deck as the Derelicts rained fire at the intruder, Zack following close behind. The energy blasts zipped over his head as he crawled to the other side of the freezer, the Derelicts falling over next to him. He and Zack climbed over some wooden crates. Eyeing the smoking crater in the wall, Billy weighed his options. _Assuming there is about seven feet between us and the crater,_ he thought, _and the detonator for the bracelets is only around six feet behind us,_ _then we have approximately ten seconds to run at two thousandths of a—_

"Hey Billy! Looky at what I got!" Zack said, waving the detonator in his hand. "Snatched it in the crossfire."

"Oh. . . well in that case," Billy said, "We need to commandeer a temporary vehicle." He pulled his cellphone out his pocket and pressed the volume and power buttons at the sametime. A silver key popped out the top of the phone. The universal key (among several of the upgrades Billy has made to his phone) helped him out of problematic situations before, hopefully it could again.

They rushed through the crater and into the parking lot, the sunlight reflecting off the nearby hovercrafts. "Alright Zack," Billy said, "We need to find something inconspicuous." They both twisted their head around for the perfect one, but they were all loud and colorful.

A black limo pulled up in front of them. Before it even stopped, A bleeding Zazar climbed out of the vehicle. "You ain't getting away that easy!" he said, trying to pull something out of his jacket.

Without hesitation, Zack snatched Billy's phone. "I think so, my good chap," he said, sliding across the limo's hood. "Cheerio!"

"Blarp!" Zazar yelled as he finally pulled his blaster from out his jacket. Grabbing Billy, he shoved him into the backseat.

While fiddling with the door lock, Billy observed everything that was with him in the limo. Remus rocked himself in the passenger seat, while Zazar took the wheel. So, there were only two Derelicts that Billy needed to overpower. But how? The fuzzy dice hanging from rearview mirror? No. The television mounted on the floor? Too heavy. Before Billy could find something he could use, Zazar started the engine.

 _Crash!_

The man in the tuxedo rammed himself through the car window and pulled Zazar out like he was nothing. From the window, Billy saw the man lift the insectoid over his and throw him up in the air.

Billy looked back over to Remus, and the insectoid's eyes slipped down to the cupholder beneath them. A pair of handcuffs and a blaster rested in there. As Remus reached for the weapon, Billy snapped one cuff on him and the other on the steering wheel.

"Dah! I've been tainted!" Remus screamed as he pulled out his spray can. He disinfected himself as Billy climbed out the car.

Heart racing, Billy ran through the parking lot. _Where did Zack go?_ he wondered as his legs began to strain his shoulder, he could see the man in the tux tailing him. The man rushed after him, chopping the air with his hands as he ran. Only inches away from him, he reached out for Billy.

A white hovercraft with a pink ice cream cone on the roof rammed into the man, knocking him ten feet away. The craft's window rolled down, revealing Zack at the wheel. "Hop in!" he said.

"Zack, What—" Billy stopped. To his left, the tuxedo man slowly crawled back to his feet. Billy jumped into the craft as Zack flew it away.

As the restaurant became more and more distant in the rearview mirror, and as _Pop Goes the Weasel_ blared out the craft's speakers, Billy thought it was safe to finally the question. "Why did you get an Ice cream delivery vehicle?"

Zack kept his eyes locked on the rearview mirror. "You said you wanted something inconspicuous, right?"

"Yes, and your point is?"

"Well, Zack said, "I thought it would be so conspicuous, that it would actually be inconspicuous, you know what I mean? Like, who is gonna look for us in a ice cream truck? No—"

 _Tick, tick, tick. . ._

Billy looked down at his bracelet: _4:59:57._ He looked back up Zack, who gulped before sliding back in his chair.

"Zack? Where's the detonator?"

Wide eyed, Zack reached into his back pocket pulled the pen-shaped trigger out. The button was pressed in and illuminated red. "I think I sat on it. . ."

"Thanks, thanks a lot," Billy said, "Now we're going to have to play Xion's little game if we want our morphers, and our lives!"

"But we don't even know what this 'Eye of Vox'-thing even is. How are we gonna find it?" Zack asked.

"I suppose we are going to make a visit to the bank. . ."

* * *

The grand golden lobby of the National Napoleon Bank of Delta-Vegas was surprisingly quiet given that it was just robbed, people just sat in their seats waiting to be serviced by a teller as per usual. Billy knew it was just robbed because of sign being taken down by hairy cyclops. The sign read: _Business will continue promptly at 12:15, after the scheduled Derelict robbery._ So, the Derelicts had way more power on this planet than Billy initially thought. They must of arranged for **KAH-PLU-FLUK** (Whoever he was.) to steal the Eye of Vox (Whatever that was.) from the bank without any did mention earlier that the police were more or less on his payroll. Billy was afraid that he and Zack were going to have to go at this one alone.

They approached the first open booth that they could find. Behind the booth's glass, sat a man in a black suit with grey skin and black rings over his eyes. "Are you number three?" he asked.

"No, I am afraid this is an emergency," Billy said.

The man tilted his head to the microphone near him. "Number three. Now calling number three," he said sleepily.

"Come on, this is about that thing was stolen," Zack said.

The man's grey eyes looked up slowly. "Do you have any relationship with the owner of deposit box number 37124569.3333793254-32AB?"

"Yeah we're their cousin," Zack quickly added.

"Then I must receive identification forms the Q-Department," the grey man said.

This was a lost cause, and Billy wanted to end it. "Well, I don't suppose that department is open?" Billy said, backing away.

"Of course it is." the teller slammed his hand onto a big red button on his desk. Like a sideways elevator, the man and his desk was pushed away from them, sliding in its place was the same grey man in a green suit.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" he asked.

"Uh, can you help us find out what happened to our cousin's stolen box?" Billy asked.

The grey man blinked slowly. "What is name of your cousin and what is the identification number of deposit box in question?"

Zack must of been tired of this also. He started to back away with Billy. "You know what?" he said, "We can't actually think of the number right now so. . ."

"Then I'll refer you to Department F," he slammed on the button. This time pushing him up to be replaced by another grey man in a blue suit.

"Can I help you gentlemen?"

Zack slammed his fist on the table. "You know what? The service around here sucks, and I would like to have a word with the guy in charge around here!"

"Well sir, if that's what you want, then. . ."

"Wait, stop!" Billy screamed.

The man pressed the button again.

* * *

After thirty minutes of run around, the boys were guided to a couple of chairs across from the desk of the bank president, who had his large office chair facing away from them.

"Sir,"Billy said.

The chair spun around and there he was, in his traditional blue army uniform. The man Billy had seen represented in so many textbooks was before him, Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Can how help man?" said a robotic voice from a collar Napoleon was wearing.

"Woah, are you the real dude?" Zack asked.

Napoleon waved his finger at Zack. "As real am I can be! What do you think saying?!" the collar said.

The only conclusion that Billy could come up with to explain what he was looking at was that this Napoleon was a clone from _Clones "R" Us._ This Napoleon must have somehow worked his way up to being president of the bank.

"Excuse me?" Zack asked.

"What do you think saying?!" Napoleon's collar demanded.

"Sir," Billy interrupted, "why are you wearing that collar?"

"Brace transforms into french thought with vegan-world from english," Napoleon's collar said.

"I hate vegans, and I'm still hungry," Zack said.

Billy's stomach growled with the reminder that haven't eaten anything yet. He tried to push it away by sticking to the mission at hand."Mr. Bonaparte, We were hoping you could help tell us everything about the owner of the deposit box that was stolen," he lifted his arm to show him the countdown on the bracelet, " we are a bit desperate."

Napoleon laughed, while the voice from the collar mimicked his laughter by repeating the the word: "Ha."

"So what about this is? The dirt-licks treat bad youtube? Ever when they buy cops, vegan-world has been dirt. Help, I guess."

"I think I'd understand eighteenth century french more," Zack whispered

Billy shushed him.

Napoleon placed a file on his desk and opened it. "Man's name was Atax. He put icerock here a couple of weeds ago and..."

 _Icerock?_ Billy thought, _Is that suppose to mean diamond? Or—_

Napoleon's phone rang and he answered it without hesitation."Yo," he said to the phone before pausing, then continued, "Say with Himmler fat he cancan walk all over me! Say icerock is bye-bye and that on day he regret the day he approximated me!" he slammed the phone down.

"Sorry toys, I just angry to Naughties," Napoleon said.

"It's okay, I think we've gathered all the info we need," Billy lied. He just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. They all stood up from there chairs.

"Thanks for telling us about the Eye of Vox," Zack said.

"Eye of Vox?" Napoleon said. He bent down under his desk and pulled out an axe.

"Woah man," Zack said, "what's up? I thought you already knew what it was?"

"Mine is Eye!" the collar said as he threw the axe at them. Billy and Zack ran for the door, out to the lobby.

* * *

Legs aching, heart racing, stomach growling, Zack slid to the driver seat of the ice cream craft. He turned the universal key and revved up the engine. _What the hell?_ Zack thought. _Who would've thought that Napoleon would be so mean?_

Billy climbed in the passenger seat. "Alright Zack, let—" Billy stopped and slammed his fists on the dash. "Darn it!"

"What? What's wrong?" Zack asked.

"The file is still on Napoleon's desk," Billy said, opening the craft door.

"Your not gonna go back in there, are ya?"

"We need to figure out who this Atax guy is and how he fits into all of this. I'll be back in a minute." Billy slammed the door shut behind him and ran back up the concrete stairs to the bank.

 _How could someone so smart be so stupid?_ Zack thought. _He thinks he can take on an eighteenth century French emperor? And one with an axe too? Nah. Billy can barely pick up his textbooks without morphing. I guess I'm gonna have to—_

White cream splattered all over the windshield. _What the?_ Zack turned on the wipers, and as they wiped away the cream, he saw it. He saw the bright sun reflect off its yellow jumpsuit and its orange pom pom buttons. He saw its red afro sway in the wind. He saw the clown.

It glared at him from miles away, cream pie in one hand, red balloon in the other. It's red lips didn't form a smile, but a twisted grimace. It pointed its finger right at Zack, then slashed it across its throat. Zack couldn't move. He wouldn't dare move away from its yellow eyes.

"I got the file! Let us get a move on!" Billy said as he climbed back in the craft.

Zack snapped closer to Billy's face and tugged at his shirt "Billy! Billy! We got a clown after us! What do we do! What do we do!"

Billy looked out the windshield. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

Shifting his eyes back at the windshield, Zack noticed the clown was gone, vanished, like it was never there at all. _Do clowns know to disappear? Of course they do! If they can fit into those little cars, they could do anything. . ._

"Zack!"

"Oh alright," Zack said as he flew the craft as far from the bank, and the clown, as possible. The axe wielding Napoleon tailing them for as long as his little legs could take him.

* * *

 _4:00:03_

Reading the file carefully, Billy was able to find Atax's address. Hopefully, this man would be able to give Billy the answers needed. So far, the only thing he could extrapolate was that this Eye of Vox was some sort of diamond, and a very precious one at that, so precious that the Derelicts didn't even seem interested in taking anything else in the account besides the Eye. Atax's two hundred million— of whatever the currency on Delta Vegas is called— was untouched.

 _That two hundred million must not have been all he had either,_ Billy thought as Zack parked the craft in front a mansion. Actually, it might have been more accurate to call it a castle with its marble walls and tall towers on each side. It seemed ancient with red moss growing over the front porch. He almost smelled the cobwebs from even inside the ice cream craft.

"Hey, uh, your pizza is here," Zack said as he knocked on the gargantuan front door. Silence followed. Zack bit into his lip and looked at Billy with wide eyes. They both almost took a step back, only for the door to creak its way open.

"Like zoinks, Billy," Zack said, "I have a bad feeling about this."

"It will be fine," Billy lied. They wandered through the grand marble hall of the castle. The floor was covered in a rainbow of party streamers. Billy kicked balloons out his way moved through the dark hall. As they went along, the piles of balloons on the floor were replaced with piles of unconscious insectoids.

"Woah," Zack said they walked passed a black craft that was parked through a crater in the castle wall, "I guess Atax really knows how to throw a party," Zack said as he stepped over an insectoid that using a red balloon was pillow.

Billy crouched down to the floor. Among the shards of a shattered glass bottle, was a trail of pink powder, a trail that lead all the way across the castle. Following it around a corner and down a hallway, the trail seemed to lead into a living room. The powder was spilling out of a torn bag on a glass table next to a—

"Oh no!" Billy said. Next to the bag, was an unconscious hairy cyclops, a cyclops that matched the file's description of Atax perfectly. .He ran over to the table and checked his pulse, nothing. Atax laid there, eye open, and face down in a pile of pink powder. _Why didn't Atax just say no to interstellar drugs?_

"Billy? Where did— Oh, come on!" Zack said as he saw the dead cyclops. "Great, what are we gonna do now!"

"Just give me a minute. I can figure this out." Billy ran his fingers all over the scattered papers on the glass table. He picked one up, powder falling from it, and read it. A list of prices ran down the paper, prices for drinks, chairs, tables, electricity, and other expenditures. Some of the prices were circled and scribbled over in blue ink. One of the scribbles read: _Cut my losses? Cut Cyclopolis?_

"Hey Billy, look at what ay done found," Zack said. He was standing over a landline phone with a blinking orange button. "Ah hink Ah micht Ah hae foond a clue ower haur."

 _Why can't you just pick one bad accent and stick with it?_ Billy thought as he walked over to the phone. Zack pressed the button and the phone's keypad unfolded into a monitor. The image of a blue insectoid with four red eyes flashed onto it.

"Hey! Its **KA**. . . **KA**. . . that dead guy!" Zack said.

"Alright 'tax, I'm doin' the job tomorrow," **KAH-PLU-FLUK** said, "You better put the body on ice. See ya later." The image went black and the monitor folded back in the phone.

"Wait? So did Atax help plan the robbery?" Zack asked. "Why?"

Billy scanned his eyes up and down the price list. He handed it to Zack. "Perhaps, he wasn't as financially secure as we assumed. Perhaps, he thought whatever he thought the diamond was worth would cover all of this."

Zack raised an eyebrow at the list and scratch his head. "But why not just cash the Eye in? Why did he need the Derelicts to steal it from him?"

"Perhaps he was holding the Eye for someone or some special purpose, and he couldn't spend anything on it, but If the eye gets stolen then he would be free to do whatever he wanted with the money. Also," Billy said as he rummaged through the glass table again, "Is it not suspicious that Atax gave himself an overdose while all this happening to him?"

"You think somebody killed him? Do you think **KAH-PLUUU**. . . that guy did it?" Zack asked.

"I believe so, however, who killed **KAH-PLU-FLUK**?" In the corner of his eye, Billy spotted a black mark on the bag of powder. He lifted it up, and the bag had some kind of circular drawing on it. A flower? No the edges were too sharp to be a flower. To him, looked a lot like a. . . shuriken? But why—

An engine roared to life. . .

They ran back to the crater in the wall. The black craft was out of there and headed down to the road. Rushing into there ice cream craft, they barreled down the road after the craft, _Pop Goes the Weasel_ blaring the whole time. Zack managed to creep up to the craft, only for a swarm of insectoid children to jump in front of them.

"I scream! You scream! For ice cream!" the children shouted.

Zack slammed his head on the steering wheel. "We lost another lead!"

"Do you realize now why picking an ice cream deliverly vehicle was a terrible idea?" Billy said.

"What now?" Zack asked.

"Cyclopolis," Billy said.

"What does that mean?"

* * *

 _3:40:08_

 ** _Cyclopolis!_** flashed in pink neon letters on top of a pyramid. A swarm of insectoids and reptilians crowded at the front gate. Billy and Zack slipped and slid through them and made their way to the red rope.

A metal spear stabbed into the earth in front of Billy. It was held by a three foot tall robotic Horus. "You are not on the list!" the robot commanded.

"Wait a minute." Zack reached into his pocket. "I think my friend Benny says otherwise," he said as he unfolded an orange Monopoly dollar. Zack smiled and winked at Horus

The robotic Horus and a robotic Anubis threw the boys into the gutter. Billy wiped the green slime that was now covering his shirt. "Any other brilliant ideas?" he asked. "Any at all?"

"Just one," Zack said as he pointed his finger outward. A bus-sized craft parked across from Cyclopolis. A sign on the side of it read: _The Terrible Two! Rocking Delta Vegas since '86!_

 _Oh no,_ Billy thought, _he is not going to try maneuver K, is he?_

"Maneuver K!" Zack shouted as he ran after the bus. Maneuver K, as Billy called it, was when the rangers had to take someone's clothes to slip undercover. Obviously, the maneuver only works if the Rangers actually look like the people they're dressed as.

But still, despite Billy's pleadings, they knocked out the Terrible Two with the reserved Zordinian sleeping gas in Billy's phone, put on their blue and green leisure suits, grabbed their guitars, and headed to the back of Cyclopolis.

A hairy cyclops in a trucker hat stood at the back door. He burped and winced at the them as they approached. "What's up my good man?" Zack said. "We're here to rock your world tonight."

The cyclops tilted his head at them. He looked back at a Terrible Two poster on the wall. Billy gulped as he saw the cyclops compare the two slugs in leisure suits on the poster to the two of them. Squinting hard and scratching his head, the cyclops gazed into the poster for what seemed like a eternity.

"Eh, screw it. I don't get paid enough for this job anyway. Come right in," he said as he opened the door for them.

They were lead into dimmily purple lit stone interior of the club. Chaos reigned as hundreds of cyclopses of partied the night away. A chandler crashed onto a table as a cyclops jumped onto it. Three of them dunked their heads into barrels of orange liquid and fell in. Another one ran past the boys, covered in the pink powder and crashed behind the bar.

An enormously fat cyclops with an egyptian headdress laid in wheel barrel, and was rolled over to Billy. "So you will be joining us for dinner tonight?" he tried to say as he shoved a tomato in his mouth.

"Yes, your. . . highness?" Billy said, "But first we were hoping we could talk to Atax again, or maybe one of his associates?"

"Oh please, call me Namer," he said, spitting tomato juice onto Billy's face. "Unfortunately, Atax has been a little busy lately, but you know hard it is to negotiate for Grade-A narcotics, especially from the Kang. Am I right?"

Billy's eyes shifted rapidly back and forth. "Uh, yes. . . of course."

"Speaking of which." Namer clapped his hands and another cyclops popped out behind Behind Zack with a silver platter with perfect lines of the pink powder. "Please," Narmer said, "I insist."

"No gracias," Zack said pushing the platter away.

"Hey! You guys got no idea who are messing with!" someone screamed from the back of the club. Narmer rolled his eyes as he was turned to face the source of the comotion. A slender reptilian man was being held back by two cyclopses. The reptilian hissed and tugged away, snapping its jaws at them.

"Would you let it go!" Namer yelled.

"How could pull the plug on us like that!" the reptilian screamed. "We been making sweet sounds at this scene for days, and you drops us for a couple of hacks!"

"Your music is for old people!" Narmer yelled back, his gut bubbling out with every word. "Go back to Horath!"

"You'll regret this!" the reptilian screamed as he was thrown outside.

"Anyways." Namer grabbed another tomato off a nearby platter and shoved in his mouth. "Yeah, Atax's wife, Raizel, should be coming in soon."

"Really? I didn't know he was married," Billy said. _There might more to this conundrum that previously theorized,_ Billy thought.

"Oh yeah, to be honest, Atax might own the place, but Rai, she wears the forty foot long pair of pants, if you catch my drift."

"Yeah, yeah." _What is he talking about?_ Billy thought. _I am wasting my time._ "Can we talk to her now?"

Namer lead them into her office and told them to that she should be there any minute. Billy rummaged through the desk drawers, while Zack peeked through the cracked door.

"So here's what I've theorized so far," Billy said, "Atax was drowning in debt and didn't want his wife to know about it, so he arranged to have the Eye of Vox stolen by **KAH-PLU-FLUK** , and split the money between them. His wife might have found out, and I think she killed the both of them to get the diamond herself."

"There's one problem with that," Zack said.

'What?" Billy said, heading to the door.

"Where does _he_ fit into all of this?" Zack pointed out of the door crack. The man, the tall man who attacked the Derelicts at the restaurant was heading straight toward them. He was in a black tuxedo now, but Billy recognized his cold blue eyes.

They grabbed their guitars and waited by the door for him. As soon as he strolled in, they clobbered him the back with the guitars. Falling hard to the ground, the man winced in pain.

"What in the _hallor_ is going on!" the man said.

"I think we could ask you the same inquiry!" Billy said.

"Yeah, why have you been trying to kill us!" Zack said.

The man shifted his head back between the two of them and squinted. "What? What are you talking about? I have never seen you two before in my life." The man seemed genuinely confused.

 _Perhaps, he is just excellent at playing stupid,_ Billy thought. "Enough, tell us what you want and what it has to do with us."

"Yeah, and tell us what you know about that clown!" Zack said.

"Clown? What?" the man said, tilting his head.

"Zack, now is not the time," Billy whispered.

"I want to know what the clown—"

A huge lumbering mass crashed through the roof. Billy and Zack hit the ground as the falling force shaked the room and threw dirt into the air. The man climbed to his feet and ran for the door. Zack helped Billy get back to his an wiped the dust off of him. As the debris cleared, Billy saw what happened and dropped his jaw.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex had just crashed into the building, leaving a gaping crater in the wall and ceiling. The dinosaur laid unconscious on the floor.

Wide eyed, Zack just stared at the prehistoric creature. "Why is there a dinosaur in a nightclub?"

In one last act of consciousness, the Tyrannosaurus spat out a silver briefcase.

"And why did it swallow its luggage?" Zack asked.

Immediately, Billy recognized the briefcase as the same one that the gunman had back on **KAH-PLU-FLUK's** ship. He picked up the saliva covered case and examined it, thinking about how all this could all fit together. _Forty foot lonf pair of pants? Forty foot long pair of pants. . ._

"I think this is Raizel. . ." Billy said.

"The dead cyclops is married to a dinosaur? How?!" Zack yelled.

" _Clones "R" Us?"_

"Alright," Zack said, "but she obviously wasn't the one who shot **KA—** whatever, so why does she have the diamond? And who killed her?"

Billy examined her enormous head and plucked and sharp metal out of her nose. It was a shuriken, four blades and a square hole in the center. The exact same design was the one on the bag of drugs. _Perhaps—_

A cyclops entered the office. "It's dinner time, guys."

Zack looked back at Billy, then at all the chaos in the room around. "Uh, do you think we can reschedule?"

"Sorry boys, but you don't seem to get it. It's dinner time."

* * *

"Was pineapple pizza just too much to ask for?" Billy heard Zack say from the other side of the spit. The heat of the fired blared onto Billy's face. As he was rotated, Billy caught a glimpse of Narmer and the other cyclopses tying napkins around their necks.

"So is this what you do?" Billy asked, "You contract musicians, get intoxicated, and consume them?"

"Pretty much," Narmer said, "We believe that eating the flesh of music makers heightens are spiritual frequency. It brings us closer to Zeus, or was it Ra? Or . . ."

"Man, shut up! You just like eating people!" Zack said.

Namer burped and shrugged his shoulder as he was handed the case. "Before you die, I would like to thank you boys for bringing the Eye of Vox back to us. It is a precious relic of our culture, and it is a shame to learn that Atax and Raizel tried to take it from us, but you know what they say? Never trust a cyclops who falls for an extinct reptile. You know what I mean?"

"No!" Zack said.

"What kind of relic?" Billy asked "Why is a jewel so important to a group of drug addicts? Does it even belong to you?"

"It's ours! We stole it from the Voxans fair and square!" Namer said.

"You steal everything!" Zack said.

"You're a cult of cultural appropriations," Billy added, "You're worse than the Romans."

Namer spat chunks of tomato at them. "I will not be disrespected like this in front of my own peo—"

The windows shattered as red beams rapidly fired into the club. One of the cyclopses grabbed Narmer's wheel barrel and hauled him away. "They found us!" Narmer screamed, dropping the case into the rising smoke, "The Neon Nazis found us!"

Billy couldn't believe what he just heard. _Did he just say. . ._

Out of the smoke and haze of gunfire, red and white lights illuminated them. As they approached the spit, Billy could see every detail of them. Everything from the peaks of their caps, to the edges of their badges, to seems of their clothes were covered in red and white neon. As unreal as it may have seemed, they were really there.

"Billy! What do Nazis have to do with any of this?!" Zack asked.

All possible combination of words became caught in Billy's throat, stuck in there like the bile was this morning. The most unlikely combination of words, the one he never thought he'd hear himself say, came out. "I. . . I don't know."

The one with the huge round glasses approached the spit and took off one of his leather gloves. "Hello, I am Yo Himmler Schmidt. I haffe peen looking for zis diamond for ein fery long time. Do you know vere it is?

Billy tried his best not to look at the briefcase, which now laid under a flipped over table. He just shook his head at the Nazi.

"I can honestly tell you we don't know anything about anything," Zack said.

"Excellent," Schmidt said with a smile. He spun himself around and yelled at his men. "Fan out! und brepare zee torture deffices!"

Billy and Zack continued to be rotated on the spit, helpless, and unable to anything but watch them tear the club apart and wait to see what they'll do to them next. Billy couldn't even think of a way out this. How could he? He couldn't even think of how he go into this situation the first place. Nothing that happened in the past couple of hours has made anything even closely resembling sense. _It would take a miracle to get us out of here,_ he thought.

 _Knock, knock._

Billy lifted his head up to see where that noise came from. High up in the ceiling, there he was, the man in the tuxedo. He lifted up one of the windows and poked his right fist into the building. He tapped his watch with his left index finger, and a beam of red light zipped out the watch onto the rope holding them to the spit.

"What the—" Zack said as the beamed cut straight through the rope. Billy thrusted his weight to the side so that they would fall to side of the fire pit.

"Zey are escabing!" one of the Nazis screamed. From above, the man in tuxedo threw down a smoke grenade, the puff consuming the entire club.

"Hurry!" Billy said as they ran through the smoke. He rushed over to the toppled over table and pulled it to the side. Zack grabbed the briefcase and they ran to the back, hoping to find some kind of exit. Dashing into a hallway, they found a door and barrel towards it.

Remus bursted out of the door with a blaster. "Hey, I've been looking all over town for you guys!"

"Hey man," Zack said, surprisingly upbeat, "we got the diamond."

"Great!" Remus then fired at the boys and they ran away, back into the smoke. "Oh come one, guys! Just let me shoot you!" he whined.

 _Of course,_ Billy thought, _of course he would just try to kill us as soon as we found the diamond. Why would he do anything else?_ They found a stairwell and ran up it and shut themselves into a small room.

Tapping his finger at the door, Billy tried to get his thoughts together. _What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?_ he thought.

"Hey Billy," Zack called from the back of the room, "I think the Nazis forgot something important in here."

He turned toward Zack. "What are you—"

Billy was gapped. From a floating metal casket, Zack pulled out an icy and blue Adolf Hitler and started playing with his mouth. "Hey Billy, I'm a Nazicle!" Zack made Adolf say.

Holding back a laugh, Billy said: "Zack, please put the fascist dictator down. We need to—" The sound of feet marching up the stairs made Billy stop. "Nevermind," Billy said, "I have an Idea."

Within a minute, Billy found himself hugging uncomfortably tight around Adolf's torso as the casket was pushed out of the club. He looked up at Zack, who was just staring at Adolf's dried frozen face.

"He smells funky," Zack said.

"Shoosh!"

The casket stopped moving. Peeking out of the the top, Billy saw that they were now in a open back truck. He got out and pushed the casket out of the truck. They watch the truck drive away into the distance.

A hand gripped Billy's shoulder, he turned around to find the tuxedo man pointing a blaster at him.

"Man, what is your deal?" Zack said as he tried to tackle the man. "And how do you change your clothes so fast." Zack's comment made Billy realize that the man was back to wearing a black tuxedo. A detail he would've otherwise miss, because he had a gun in his face.

A red beam shot into the man's head. He dropped Billy and grabbed his own head as it began to spark. As the man ran for the hills, Billy saw the metal skull exposed underneath the man's burning skin.

The man being a cyborg wasn't really a shock to Billy. What was a shock was seeing where that red beam came from.

"Hello," The man said, lowering his watch, the man with the same exact face and the same cold eyes as that cyborg, but this man was wearing a white tuxedo.

"There's two of you?" Zack said.

"Yes," he said as he pulled something out of his jacket. "I am John Baxter." He flipped open what looked like a police badge. "I'm an agent of Time Force. Would you like a drink?"

* * *

They all sat down in a booth at Cyclopolis. Baxter wiped the dirt off the table and handed the boys a couple of orange drinks in glasses. The orange liquid popped out of the glasses and screamed at them. Billy and Zack pushed the glasses away. Baxter chugged both glasses as the orange screeched down his throat.

"I am a time agent sent from twenty years in the future," Baxter said,"There will be a war Napoleon and the Neon Nazis almost destroys the galaxy. I have been sent back to get the diamond out of the hands of the hands of either of them to prevent that war."

"What is so special about this diamond?" Zack asked.

"The Eye of Vox is made of pure chronitons. If it could be broken down, then it could be used a temporary time travel agent. You would be able to go back and reverse any event in history of your choosing, something that both Napoleon and the Nazis would be very interested in having," Baxter said.

"And who's your doppelganger that's been trying to kill us?" Billy asked.

"He is what we call an eliminator droid, probably sent here from an even more extreme parallel future. That version of time force must of picked my face as a base, and told it to kill anyone associated with the diamond if it couldn't destroy it itself," Baxter said.

"Well here you go," Billy handed the case over to Baxter, who tried typing on the case's keypad, but it gave him a red rejection light. Billy thought he saw something on Baxter's hand, like a smudge or a tattoo, but it seemed to disappear after he blinked.

"Sorry boys, but I cannot return this to time force without knowing for sure the diamond is in here. We need the combination," Baxter said.

"Okay," Billy said. He thought that was weird, but he was willing to go along with it. "However, we have our own little problem." Billy pointed to his bracelet. It read: _3:00:05_.

"Don't worry," Baxter said, "I have way of dealing with the Derelicts, especially Remus. I'll take care of your problem in due time, but we must get the combination. The future depends on it. Now, the most likely person to know the combination is Atax."

"But he's dead," Zack said.

"I can assure you he is still alive, he might be hiding out on his boat on the dark side of the planet. If he is, then you are going to get the info out of him," Baxter said.

"How?' Zack asked.

"I'll be listening," Baxter threw a couple of tiny microphones onto the table.

* * *

"Whatever happened to the pony, momma?" Baxter mumbled in his sleep. Baxter sleep talked the entire drive over to the docks.

As if there was some kind of invisible wall between the two zones, Zack drove the ice cream craft straight through the daylight of the lightside of the planet and into the eternal night of the dark side of the planet. Baxter finally woke up and pointed out the boat they were looking for.

Billy and Zack climbed onto the deck of the boat and looked around. Zack tried to slide open a glass door that lead to the inside of the boat, but it was locked. Peering into the glass, he tried to see what was inside. Then he saw it. In the reflection of moonlight on the glass, he saw the clown. The clown scowled at Zack. He had pure burning hatred in its eyes.

"Billy! Watch out!" Zack screamed as he turned to face the clown. It was gone now. He turned back to the glass. Its reflection was gone too. He vanished into thin air.

"What?" Billy yelled. Alarms rang throughout the boat, and before the boys even knew what happened, they had burlap sacks over their heads.

Billy himself being dragged inside and dropped on the floor. The sack was pulled from off his face, revealing Zack was next to him in the same situation. They were surrounded by reptilians in black suits.

"You two have been a thorn in my side for far too long," a robotic voice said in the darkness.

"Who said that? Reveal yourself," Billy said.

"Oh, it's just the man you tried to screw over, your employer, Atax Zaku!" Hovering into the light, came the black craft. The same black craft from Atax's castle. "Were you expecting anyone else?" the craft said, headlights blinking with every word.

"Your a car?!" Zack said.

"Why, yes. I've been having some trouble with the Kang, so I've had to lay low for a little while. My witch doctor suggested I fake my own death and let him use his magic to put my soul into my hovercraft until things cooled down. It seemed logical to me," Atax said.

The reptilians dropped the case in front of Atax. "Now, I have the ticket back to my own body," he said.

Things seemed to coming together for Billy, at least somewhat."I see," Billy said, "you and **KAH-PLU-FLUK** arranged to have the diamond stolen, so that the cyclopses wouldn't find out that were planning on using the diamond to pay off your debt to the Kang from the drugs you bought. Am I correct?"

Atax was silent.

"You two probably agreed to split the money you earned from cashing in the diamond, but you didn't want to share, so you hired a hitman to kill **KAH-PLU-FLUK** and take the diamond for yourself. Correct?" Billy said.

"Don't you dare accuse me of anything! I didn't kill my friend, and you're not so high and mighty yourselves. I know you two have been fooling around with my wife!" Atax said.

"What?" The dinosaur?" Zack said.

"Yeah, that prehistoric whore! I had a feeling she'd been playing me. **KAH** let it slip that she was messing around with you two after i hired you," Atax said.

 _What is he— Oh!_ Billy realized that they were still wearing the Terrible Two's leisure suits. "Sir, we are not the band you hired! We are not even the same species as them" Billy pleaded.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Atax said, "I know a shapeshifter when I see one. I've been friends with one for years! Hey, did you know, the Kang also deal with human trafficking? I think if I give them the diamond and you two. They'll be off my back in no time at all."

The reptilians sprayed green gas at them before putting the sacks back over the heads.

* * *

Billy awakened. His arms and legs were contorted and knotted around Zack's. They were crammed together in this tiny space. Billy theorized it they were in Atax's trunk.

"Give me some elbow room," Zack said.

"Oh, my apologies. Also, my apologies for getting us stuck here in the first place. Wait a moment? That was your fault," Billy said.

"But, the clown. . ." Zack said.

"There is no clown!" Billy said.

Atax came to a stop and the Reptilians pulled them both out of the trunk. They were dragged out onto a gravel clearing somewhere on the darkside of the planet. Billy and Zack were placed on their knees.

"Alright, come out wherever you are!" Atax said.

 _Flash!_ Three bright lights appeared for a second, leaving behind a cloud of smoke. From it, three figures emerged. Three red ninjas the approached them, each one brandishing a katana and a shuriken drug logo on their torso.

"Where is our payment?" one ninja said.

"Here you go," Atax said as a reptilian dropped the case in between Billy and Zack, "The Eye of Vox and some extra cargo for you to sell."

One ninja went over and picked up the case, bringing it to the leader of the three. The leader looked over the case. "I hope you don't think of me as a fool," the head ninja said, " What is the combination?"

"2-7-3-8-1," Atax said.

The ninja punched in the code. It gave him a red light and a rejection noise. He dropped the case."I am sick of your games," the ninja snapped his fingers.

Whooshing sounds flew through the air, each one followed by a thud. All of the reptilians surrounding Atax fell to the ground, with shurikens sticking out of their bodies. Atax's car horn blared out in fear."Wait, I swear I'm not playing you," Atax said as he started his engine and tried to backup.

 _Whoosh! Thud! Ssssss…_

In an instant, Atax's tires were flattened by shurikens. The ninjas ripped their katanas out and ran past the boys. They ganged up all over Atax and began smashing his windows and headlights.

"Let us go, while they are distracted," Billy said.

"But, what if we get whooshed to death?" Zack said.

Before Billy could think of a solution, five huge spotlights blinded him and came toward them. They were motorcycles. Four of them zoomed past the boys and circled the ninjas, hitting them with metal pipes. One biker parked in front of Billy and took off his sunglasses. It was the angry reptilian from Cyclopolis.

"I bet you didn't know that the band you were messing with were actually members of the Delta-Vega angels, did ya?" he said, pointing to the logo on the back of his leather jacket.

"What? What does this have to do with anything?" Zack asked.

"You think my music if for old people?" the reptilian biker asked.

"No. And I do not care!" Billy said.

"Well, your music is gonna be for dead people….because you'll be dead...yeah."

He raised a metal pipe over Billy's head. A shuriken landed on the reptilian's helmet and he fell over. Billy ran for the case, but the band members zoomed after him. Billy threw the case at Zack.

Zack grabbed the case and looked around for what to do now. The band turned their attention toward him. Zack saw in the corner of his eye, Baxter standing between two rocks, motioning with his hands to bring the case to him.

A Neon Nazi truck rolled onto the scene.

Zack ran as far as he could. The band chased after him, but their motorcycles were shot down by the Nazi's truck. Zack ran until his legs strained him. He made it to the rocks and threw the case into Baxter's hands.

"Sorry we didn't get the code," Zack said.

"That is acceptable," it was in that moment when Zack realized he made his biggest mistake today. The moment Baxter stepped into the moonlight, and more of his body could be seen. He gave it to the wrong Baxter.

Robo-Baxter pulled out his blaster and shot him in the legs. Zack fell down in pain. Robo-Baxter looked over the case, then he was shot in the head. He fell down, twitching and sparking. A couple of Nazis came by and grabbed Zack and the case,hauling them in their truck and driving away.

Billy tried to run after Zack, but a couple of band members still chased after him. All Billy could do was run for his life. Baxter came by in the ice cream craft and picked him up. They drove all the back to the light side of the planet and stopped. Billy looked back and saw another Nazi truck was coming after them.

"What do we do?" Baxter asked.

"I have a terrible idea," Billy said. If it had be any other day, Billy would have thought this would be ridiculous, but maybe it would work today. He grabbed a smock and asked Baxter to open the server window of the craft.

Two Neon Nazis approached the ice cream craft. Billy popped up into the window, and greeted them with a smile. "What type of ice cream are you guys interested in?" he asked.

The Nazis looked at each other, then one slammed an orange Monolopy-esque dollar on the table. "Tvo cones of mint chocolate chip, bleaze," the Nazi said. Billy served them, and the Nazis went on their merry way.

Billy checked the bracelet: _2:00:05_. "Baxter!" he pleaded, "I need you help get rid of this bracelet and get my tools from the Derelicts right this minute!"

"Sorry kid," Baxter said, "The timeline is more important. If I deactivate the bracelet, then what would be your incentive to help me retrieve the Eye?"

"My friend is being held captive by Nazis! You have to do something!"

Baxter started the engine. "Listen kid," he said, "I'll make you deal. I'll 'negotiate' with Remus, but you have to guarantee me two things. One: That you will get me the Eye of Vox. And two. . ."

"Yes?"

"That you can give me a triple scoop of strawberry, right now," Baxter said.

* * *

The Nazis tied Zack to a chair and sent electrical zaps through his limbs, stabbing pains rushed up and down his body.

"Vat is zee code to zee priefcaze!" Schmidt said.

 _Zap!_

"Don't know, and I wouldn't tell you anyway," Zack said.

 _Zap!_

"Ve can't blay around any longer, pring in zee extracdor," Schmidt said. He pressed a button on his control console. From under it, a long metal claw with three drills for fingers emerged. It inched closer and closer to Zack's head. The high pitched whine of the drills consumed Zack's ears as it inched its way to his forehead.

Red lights flashed through the chamber and sirens blared. The Nazis looked at their monitor and saw security footage of Napoleon chopping through their building with an axe. The Nazis ran out of the room, leaving one to guard Zack.

 _I wanted lunch, almost became lunch, and now I'm gonna have my useless brain sucked out by Nazis. What a life,_ Zack thought.

He heard the door whoosh open. A voice said: "I am here to relieffe you of your dudies. May you haffe ein bleazant effening, zir."

Zack lifted his head up to see who it was. It was Billy, wearing a neon uniform and carrying the briefcase. The guard left them, and Billy untied him from the chair. "Boy, am I glad to see you, senor," Zack said. He got himself up from the chair and immediately fell on the floor. His limbs were like jello.

Billy dragged Zack down the stairs to the exit.

"I'm sorry I accidently turned on the bomb," Zack said.

 _Thud._

"It was a honest mistake," Billy said.

 _Thud_.

"And I'm sorry I put Napoleon on our tail, imagined a clown, and almost gave the diamond to a robot assassin," Zack said.

 _Thud._

"It's alright, it's not exactly like you've been holding me back from solving this case. All my theories have been disproved," Billy, "Baxter should be waiting for us outside."

Billy dragged Zack out to the concrete sidewalk. Baxter pulled up in the ice cream truck. He pulled out the bag with their morphers and their communicators. "Quick! Hand me the diamond, so I can bring it back to Time Force!" Baxter pleaded.

Billy looked at his bracelet: _00:03:05._ "Why is it still counting down? I thought you talked to Remus?"

Baxter stepped out of the craft and held his hand out."I swear, everything will be over soon. Just give me the Eye!"

Billy saw it again. On Baxter's hand, he saw what he thought he saw before at Cyclopolis, a black smudge, _a birthmark_. Everything clicked together in his mind. Now, finally, everything made sense."You have been lying to us this whole time, Baxter," Billy said, "Or should I say, **KAH-PLU-FLUK**!"

Baxter sighed, then slowly shook his head and contorted his body. His body shifted and morphed from a human with brown hair, to a blue insectoid with four red eyes.

"What? But you're dead!" Zack said.

"Correction Zack," Billy said, "a clone he made of himself at _Clones "R" Us_ is dead. You probably made one just so didn't have to steal the diamond yourself, didn't you?"

"Maybe," **KAH-PLU-FLUK** said.

"In fact, I think it was you who killed your clone and stole the case. You wanted to use the clone to fake your own death so you could take the diamond and run away with Raizel! And then she stole the diamond from you, only to be killed by the Kang after she tried to negotiate with them," Billy said.

 **KAH-PLU-FLUK** cocked an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I think she was cheating on Atax with you. And you blamed the Terrible Two to keep Atax off your back," Billy said.

 **KAH-PLU-FLUK** grinned, dropping the bag of morphers.

"You're probably not even a Time Force agent. That eliminator droid was the real agent, and you just shifted into his form and made up a story so you could string us along,"

 **KAH-PLU-FLUK** laughed and headed back to the craft. "Close, but no dice. I didn't kill the clone, but I probably should have, since he changed the code on me. You should never trust clones of criminals. Anyway, I actually wasn't lying when I was said I was an agent of Time Force. It's easy to be both a cop and a criminal when you can change your face. But I guess you were right about me modeling my human form after the eliminator droid. But none of that matters now, seeing as you two will be splattered all over the pavement in a couple of minut—"

A shot was fired, and Baxter fell the ground. Behind where he stood, was the clown with a shotgun.

"Give me back my ice cream craft!" the clown yelled.

"Oh, that kinda makes sense now," Zack said, "take it."

The clown got in the craft and drove away.

Billy grabbed the bag of morphers and tried to drag Zack away, but they all came to them, encircling them, closing in on them. Billy and Zack checked their bracelets:

 _00:00:06._

Schmidt and the Neon Nazi's approached them with plasma rifles.

 _00:00:05._

Napoleon swung his axe violently at them.

 _00:00:04._

The Kang readied their shurikens.

 _00:00:03._

The Delta-Vega angels reved their bikes.

 _00:00:02._

The Horus robot, carrying Namer in a gigantic baby carrier, thrusted its spear.

 _00:00:01._

 _Flash!_

* * *

Before they even knew what happened, Billy and Zack found themselves in the back of Remus's ship. Remus approached them quietly and with a black eye (probably thanks to **KAH-PLU-FLUK** ). He removed the bracelets from them, which were both frozen at the last second.

Remus grabbed the briefcase from them. "Alright," he said, rubbing his eye, "you boys win. We both have what we want. Now let me just take you back to your disgusting planet."

Remus started wiping off the briefcase with disinfecting wipes. _Man,_ Zack thought, _at this rate Remus should invest in a suit to protect him from germs_. That was when the truth hit him like a ton of bricks. Zack leaned over to a little closet and opened it. The hazmat suit fell out.

Zack turned over to see Remus holding Billy at gunpoint.

"So it was you the whole time? How and why?" Billy asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Remus said. "My life sucks and I can't stand my family. This diamond was gonna buy my ticket outta here,"

"But how did you know about **KAH-PLU-FLUK** 's plan? And the code to the case?" Zack asked.

"The fool mumbled everything in his sleep, now hand me the diamond!"

Zack picked up the case. "What's the code?"

"1-2-3-4-5," Remus said.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Billy said.

Zack punched in the code, then pulled the diamond out. He walked over, then spit into Remus's face. Remus then let Billy go so he could then spray himself in the face, causing him to scream. Remus fell onto a button, beaming him away. Robo-Baxter beamed onto the ship and crushed the diamond with his bare -Baxter faded into nothingness.

"Hey Billy, shouldn't that have caused a paradox or something?" Zack asked.

"At this point, I don't care," Billy said.

"That'll do, Donkay," Zack said, "That'll do."

* * *

Zack sat with Billy in the booth at Kali's Pizza. The hi-tech metal braces over his legs started to itch, but Zordon said that he had to wear them until his limbs started to heal.

"Remember, Zordon recommended a couple of months of from ranger duty until your legs feel better," Billy said as he cut his pineapple pizza. "The damage to your legs was surprisingly minimal. You were pretty lucky."

"I guess," was all that he could manage to say. _Great! Today I learned I'm not very smart and that I can't even dance or fight anymore. Billy might think i'm lucky, but boy, what I would give to be smart instead_ , was what Zack was really thinking.

Billy took a bite out of the pizza.

"How is it?" Zack asked.

"Morphenomenal!" Billy said.


	3. Cheerleaders from Outerspace Attack!

_Ugly,_ Trini thought, _beautifully ugly._ She was almost done sketching her codependent cell phone with separation anxiety. The phone itself was easy, but it took a whole month for her to get the hand holding it to look just right. Human hands were always the hardest to recreate, way too intricate. Now, how to depict the phone's sadness? She decided to add a word balloon coming out of the phone's frowny face. It read: _Plz don't leave me. . ._

This was the most enjoyment she had all day. Sure, making fun of the mall was great, for a little while, but it gets old real fast. So, she sat and waited for Kim and her friends to comeback from their little shopping spree. The four of them headed their way toward Trini's table: Kim, Sally, Beth, and Ashley. Or were their names Sandra, Becky, and Aisha? It was hard to keep them straight.

They were all the same person with slightly different variations, white blouse, pink hairband, huge sunglasses, two huge shopping bags, and a permanent giggle stuck on their faces. They were nice enough, but Trini never really got much from talking to them. They seemed almost unreal to her, and she wondered how Kim was able to talk to them for so long about, well, not much.

"You got that shade for how much?" Ashley/Aisha asked.

"Three dollars," Kim said,"I'm telling you, the mascara at the CVS is perfectly fine and everything else is overpriced."

"Wow Kim, you're like a genius or something," Becky/Beth said.

"I know," Kim said as she waved goodbye to her little minions and sat down across from Trini.

"So what masterpiece is it today?" Kim asked. Trini flipped her sketchbook over and showed off the phone.

"Now, that is so cute," Kim said, "Let me try." Kim flipped to the next page and went to town on it, scribbling wildly on the paper until she slammed the pen on the table and shoved her creation into Trini's face. "This is art, right?"

Looking into the incoherent mass of scribbles were vaguely arranged in the shape of rectangle, Trini smirked. "Avant-garde."

Kim reached into her shopping bag. "You make me feel so jealous, you know? Hey, you gotta check this out." She pulled out a magazine. On the cover, singer Justin Diamond tried his best to stare longingly into the distance. "So what do you think is his insecurity?" Kim asked.

This was their favorite game to play whenever they went shopping. Trini loved the opportunity to read people. She rubbed at her chin as she analyzed the phony curly haired celebrity. "I'd say he took out an insurance policy on his hair, just in case somebody made fun of it."

Kim laughed, as she always does after one of Trini's psychoanalysis. "So what do you want to do tonight? We still got a couple of more hours to burn."

"They playing _The Blob_ tonight," Trini said, "You wanna watch it together?"

"Hmm, that could be fun, but you have to promise me that it's not as weird as that other movie you showed me.

" _Eraserhead_?" Trini said. "No, It's not like that, but I won't promise that until you promise me that you won't fall asleep again."

Kim stuck her pinky out into the air. "From the bottom of my heart. . ." Trini locked her pinky tight around her's.

"I promise," Kim said.

* * *

Kim's snores reverberated throughout her bedroom as the movie's credits played. _She tried,_ Trini thought as she shoved the last bit of popcorn into her mouth, _She always tries. It's not her fault she can't appreciate the finer things in life, like seeing a giant blob of goo eat people._

Trini shut off T.V, threw the blanket over Kim, and headed for the door. Ms. Appleby told the art club that she had something very special planned for tomorrow. Based on the tone of her voice, Trini knew it was going to be something that requires as much sleep as possible. She headed out into the night.

* * *

 _Ew!_ Kim jumped out of bed in the middle of the night. Something cold and wet dripped down her face. Pulling some of off her face, she rolled it between her fingers. A sticky icky glob of reddish slime stretched out between her finger and thumb.

 _What th—_ Over her head, all over her ceiling, the slime bubbled and swirled. As she opened her mouth to scream, the slime splashed down onto her, consuming the mass of her head.

* * *

Trini sat in her ancient wooden desk, trying her best to tolerate the stuffy classroom and the familiar smell of dried paint in the air. Ms. Appleby scarfed down a chocolate bar as she addressed the class.

"Now class," she said, sucking on her fingers, "since the school year is winding down I have decided what your final project will be. You and a partner will come together and design five different miniature sculptures that will be due on every day a few weeks from now."

 _What? That's insane_ , Trini thought. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who thought so as the class uproared into a series of growns and grumbles.

"Quiet now, this is important. It's easy to be 'creative' when you're under no stress at all. True creative genius comes from one's ability to work under pressure with a short amount of time. Now to add an extra little challenge to this assignment, I have already taken the liberty of picking your partners for you, you may find them on the whiteboard."

The class released a collective moan as they all stumbled to the paper on the whiteboard. Trini was already feeling exhausted just thinking about this, but hey, she might produce something great because of it. She scrolled through the list until she found her name then looked over to the right to see her partner.

"Aisha Campbell? Isn't that one of Kim's—"

"Hey Trini!" A voice called from behind her.

She spun around to see Aisha giving her a wide-eyed, full mouthed smile.

"Hey it so great to finally be able to talk to you after all this time being in the same class together. Kim always talks about how much a genius you are and I am really looking forward to working with you. This project seems really hard, doesn't it? But it doesn't matter i guess because I know you and I are going to make a great team. I'm excited are you excited? This is gonna be great isn't it?" Aisha said.

"Yeah, great . . . just great."

* * *

The thick branches obscured Trini's eyesight. She pulled back them back like a curtain to see below her. The flupian berries that the rangers had gathered were all packed together in the only clearing on the mountain. Trini hovered her hand over her dagger holster, waiting.

 _Snap_!

Her eyes darted over to bushes, they rustled as small thuds hit the ground. Each thud moved closer and closer to the clearing. It exploded out of the brush. The spider-ape-thing saw the berries and slowly crawled to them on it's six fists. It approached the miniature mountain of berries then cautiously backed away.

 _Come on, just go for them_ , Trini thought as her hand started shaking over her dagger. The thing reached its paw out and grabbed the berries, examining them with its eight eyes.

 _Come on_ , she thought.

The thing tilted its head to the left.

 _Come on._

Then it tilted to its right.

 _Come on!_

The thing brought the berries close to its open pinchers.

 _Yes!_

The thing let out a high-pitched howl as it was strung up into the air by the net that was inconspicuously hidden beneath it. She jumped down from her tree to see the creature hang above her head. The other five rangers also came down from their hiding spots to join her.

Taking off his helmet, Jason gazed up at the creature. "Well rangers, looks like we can finally—"

The wire netting snapped as the creature tore it apart with it's bare hands. The creature jumped down onto the ground on all eights and charged at Jason.

She whipped out her dagger and flipped the switch, lighting it up. She ran in front of Jason with her dagger raised in the air. The thing swatted it out of her hand with one of its large for arms and then grabbed her with another. It pushed Trini toward its wide open pinchers. . .

The thing froze completely still. It dematerialized, dropping Trini to the ground. The mountain vanished into the familiar blue interior of the holo-room. The computer kept rubbing Trini's pain in by in by repeating: "Mission failed, mission failed." over and again.

She sighed and stood back up to brush herself off then realized there was nothing to brush off, then demorphed.

"You know, that was pretty close, You were _this_ close to taking it out," Jason said while holding his finger and thumb out.

"I thought that move was pretty awesome myself," Tommy added.

"Yeah, I guess," she said, rubbing her temple. _Is that really it? Is that the best I could?_ But before she could think otherwise, Kim jumped behind her wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulder.

"It's okay, girl," Kim said with the weirdest grin on her face, "How about we down a smoothie and forget about it?"

She tugged herself free from Kim's grasp. "Uh, sorry. I kinda promised Aisha I would come over to her place to help with the project." She tried to step away from the sheer disappointment that was pouring out of Kim's wide eyes.

"Oh, of course," Kim said, "of course." For a split second, Trini swore that Kim's eye twitched a little, but it was probably nothing.

"I swear we'll do something," she said as she went to the holo-room archway. "I'll text you later."

As the doorway shut, she saw the weirdest look on Kim's face, maybe the weirdest look to find on anyone's face. She had sad eyes, but also a huge smile all over her face.

* * *

Trini hesitantly rang the doorbell. _Maybe, I'm being too mean_ , she thought. Aisha seemed nice, but Trini knew how these group projects always turned out, she would always end up doing all the work while putting up with the boring, unpersonable, conversations from the partner she'll never speak to again. These projects always felt pointless.

Aisha came to the door. "Hey partner, you ready to have fun? My dad is working right now so we'll have the house all to ourselves. We can focus on getting the project done and then maybe party for a little bit. Fun right?!"

"Sure."

"Great! I'll meet you in my room down the hall I gotta grab some water."

Trini threw her bag onto a chair in Aisha's purple room. Next to the chair stood a nightstand covered with trophies. Framed documents hung above it. Running her eyes over all the papers, she was amazed by all the accolades Aisha had: first place at the third grade spelling bee, an award for perfect attendance during middle school, a thank you certificate from the Angel Grove homeless shelter for providing the most assistance, and more. Her eyes shifted over to the seven trophies. Picking them up one by one, she found that all of them for track and field running. Aisha never got anything below second place.

 _I was not expecting this._

"Alright let's get started," Aisha said, coming in with a couple water bottles.

Her coming in broke Trini's concentration. "What? Oh sure, just let me . . ." Trini dug through her bag to get her sketchbook out. She flipped through the pages.

"Hold on," Aisha said as she reached into her pocket. She pulled out the largest pair of spectacles that Trini has ever seen. They were like coke bottles with plastic arms Was her vision really that bad? Why didn't she ever wear them during school?

"Uh, I already had a couple Ideas that I think could easily be used for the assignment. I really like this one," Trini said as she showed off the sketch. It was of a withered, dying tree. The tree was fused together with a human skeleton, to the point where you couldn't tell where the skeleton ended and the tree began. The skeleton's arms were outstretched and wrapped around the branches. "I call it _Human Nature_."

"Wow," Aisha said, "that's like, really deep."

"Thanks."

"You know, it reminds be very much of the realism in Picasso's paintings," Aisha said.

That sentence crashed through brain like a brick through glass. _Realism? Picasso? What?_ Those two things had nothing to do with one another and neither of them had any connection to the sketch.

Aisha frowned, Trini had apparently not done a good job putting on a poker face. "Oh that was wrong wasn't it? I'm so stupid. I mean it's been almost a whole school year, and I can't even . . ." Aisha fumbled through some note cards from her pocket and spilled them all over the floor.

"Shoot!"

Trini helped her pick the cards up. Some of them had art terms, but others had things on them like: _If the conversion becomes dull, start talking about the weather. Everyone can relate to the weather._ Trini raised an eyebrow as she handed her the cards. "Do you usually carry conversation starters in your pocket?"

Aisha's eyes quickly shifted from left to right. "Yeah, don't you?"

"Uh, anyway, let's see what else we could make." Trini flipped through her sketchbook.

"I got it," Aisha said, "How about one that's a man wearing a business suit over a pair of coveralls. He's like half businessman, half plumber. It would say a lot about how we perceive jobs in this country."

"I don't. . ." Trini looked up from her book. "Actually, yeah. That's a pretty good idea." And then they were off. Over the next three hours Trini and Aisha racked their brains together to come up with five sculptors that could easily be created in a short amount of time, but also had that creative spark Trini was looking for.

Trini didn't want to phone this assignment in and she was surprised by how Aisha also seemed like she genuinely wanted to give her assignment her all, something Trini didn't find whenever she had to work with somebody in Kim's circle of friends. Aisha may not know much about art, but was she pretty good at suggesting ideas that Trini could translate onto paper.

As Trini was sketching, something caught her eye. In the snap of a second, she pointed the bedroom door. "Is that an _Aliens_ poster?!" Trini asked.

Aisha snapped her head over to the poster on the door, as if she didn't expect it to be there. She smiled a little bit, as if embarrassed. "Yeah, I really like Ripley. She's just so. . .awesome! I want be just like her someday."

"Can I ask you something?" Trini said as she look back over at Aisha's wall of accomplishments.

"What?"

"How do I put this," Trini said,"It's just that you don't seem like the kind of person, who would hang out much with say, Sally, or Beth, or . . ."

"Well I was already kinda friends with Kim and well you'd be surprised by what you can learn from those girls for example I always know how to dress for success and I—"

"Please, calm down," Trini said.

"Sorry, to be honest I only really started hanging out with Kim's friends because my dad kinda set me up to."

"Really?" Trini asked.

"Yeah, you see my dad always goes out of his way to make a lot of good connections here in Angel Grove. You know, for my future. He even got a volunteer job at the _House of Hope_ shelter because he thought it would make a good name for us in the community. A lot of Kim's friends have parents in really high places, connections to esteemed universities, high ranking jobs at top businesses. My dad thought it would be good for me to start networking by getting to know their kids."

"Interesting," Trini said, "very interesting."

* * *

For days upon days, Trini's life ran into a _Groundhog's day-_ esque loop. After school, Trini would try to fight a monster in the holoroom, fail, then she would go over to Aisha's place to work on the sculptors, trying to finalize their designs quickly so that they could get to cutting clay as soon as possible. Kim would often ask if they could hang out, but Trini couldn't. She had to get the project done. The loop Trini found herself was so repetitive that she considered making a drawing about it. Try to trap a simulated monster, fail, rinse, wash, repeat; fight off some holographic putties, fail, rinse, wash, repeat; reject Kim's offer, feel bad about it later, rinse, wash, and repeat. In truth, the only time Trini was enjoying herself was when she was working on the project, to the point where Trini started going to training less and less.

One day. kim walked with Trini back to Trini's house. Trini could only guess the rejections were piling up in Kim's mind."Fine, you don't wanna be my friend, all you had to do was so!" Kim said as she stormed off.

"Oh come on!" Trini said, "Do you really think I want to spend all day on school work? Kim? KIm?" It was too late, Kim had already made her way around the corner.

 _What's her problem?_

* * *

Bubbling, Kim's head was bubbling as she trotted down the alleyway. _That traitor, that no good traitor._ Her legs began to wobble, as if her bones ceased to exist. _I need her, we need her! I. . . Me . . . We. . . I._ She fumbled onto the ground and convulsed. The world around her began to fade into pink light.

The last thing she was her hands. Melting, her hands started melting right in front of her eyes. They melted into pink slime.

* * *

The cherry soda fizzed as Aisha poured it into a wine glass. "A toast, to a job well done," Aisha said, raising her glass. Trini couldn't help but just stare at the bubbles rising to top, her mind going to other places.

"What's wrong?" Aisha asked.

"Nothing," Trini took a sip. Honestly, everything was wrong. As much as she loved being able to stretch her artistic muscles and really spend the time on her passion that she rarely gets, it sucked that she couldn't do it while being with her friends. It sucked even more that Kim was taking this extremely personally for some reason.

There was a knock on the door. Aisha went to answer it while Trini followed hoping it was the pizza guy.

"What's up girlfriends?!" Kim screamed with wide eyes and a manic grin. Aisha immediately turned on her mall girl switch and let out a squee to match Kimberly's. Trini couldn't help but feel confused. Why was Kim wearing her old Angel Grove high cheerleading uniform? She quit the team years ago.

"Girl, what have you been up to?" Aisha asked.

"Oh nothing I was just like, shopping for like a new Marc Jacobs bag, like, like I always do and I was like, I should come here!" Kim said.

"You went shopping in your old cheerleading outfit?" Trini asked.

"Like totally, it's only my favorite thing ever," Kim said.

"Huh."

Kim didn't let up as time went by, she knocked the _Kali's Pizza_ box onto the bedroom floor when she kicked her foot into the air. "Like my shoes? They're Louis Vuitton," Kim said, waving the high heel over her head.

Marc Jacobs? Louis Vuitton? This was weird, Trini knew from the little bits of conversation she heard between Kim and friends that Kim always emphasised how to look good on a budget, and she knew Kim wasn't gonna go anywhere near Louis Vuitton after the incident with the cursed credit card.

"Girl, you're like so silly. I'll be right back." Aisha picked up the pizza box from the floor and left the bedroom.

"Are you okay?" Trini asked.

"Yeah, I'm totally fantastic," Kim said.

"It's just that you're acting a little weird." Trini placed the back of her hand on Kim's forehead, Kim smiling the whole time. Trini was expecting a fever, but her head actually felt ice cold, but it was kinda wet, or sweaty or something. Trini pulled her hand back to see a clear jelly like substance reflecting on her hand. It was probably just petroleum so Trini tried to ignore it.

"Listen, I'm really sorry about what happened earlier today," Trini said.

"Girl, what are you talking about?" Kim said with a laugh.

"About the whole thing, you said earlier about me giving you the cold shoulder and you feeling like I didn't want to be your friend anymore? You don't remember that?"

Kim's smile slowly sank into a blank, empty stare then it sank even lower into a melancholic frown. Her head quickly shook to the side and she blinked rapidly before snapping back into that huge smile she's had all evening. She jumped off the bed.

"It's all water under the bridge. Hey do you wanna see one of my old cheers?" Kim didn't even wait for a response. " Ready! OK! J-O…" Kim cheered as she flailed her arms.

 _This is getting really weird._ "Alright Kim, you keep on cheering. I'm gonna get you some water."

"Hurry back," Kim said, arms still flailing.

Trini made her way to the kitchen. Did Kim just have a nervous breakdown a couple of hours ago? Water probably wasn't gonna help much, coffee maybe? She was pretty cold. Either way, Trini had to do something for her. On her way to the kitchen, she passed by the archway leading to the dining room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aisha standing by—

 _What? No._

No way. There was no chance Trini saw what she thought she saw. It was impossible, there was no way Aisha was with . . .

Trini slowly walked backwards down the hallway, back to the archway. She slowly turned her head to the side.

"I'm telling you, some Sally Hansen is just what you need," Kimberly said while holding Aisha's hands to check out her nails.

"You really think so Kim?" Aisha said.

Trini's jaw dropped and she ducked behind the arch wall. How? How could she be talking to Aisha? _I just left_ , she thought, _maybe—_

"Triniiiii! You're missing my routine," Kim called from Aisha's room. Nope, things were really as bad as they seemed. Trini knew she had to get Aisha out of here and call the others was soon as possible.

"Hey Aisha," Trini tried her best not to stare at Kim, "uh, I just remembered something about the project. Can I talk to you outside for a minute."

"Sure," Aisha said.

That one word made Kim's smile turn into a deep frown. "Oh please don't leave me," Kim said, her voice trembling. Kim clapped her hands shut on Aisha's fingers.

"Ouch Kim. It's gonna be okay."

"Please don't go."

Before Trini could intervene, the other Kim showed up.

"Trini's what's taking you so-" the Kim stopped when she realized there was another one in the room.

Trini saw Aisha's head move from left to right. "What the- Ouch," the Kim clapped her hands even harder unto Aisha, secreeding a pink slime.

Both Kims released a horrible blood-curdling screech. The Kim closes to Trini whipped it's arm at her, wrapping a pink slime tentacle around Trini's mouth. Trini's survival instincts took over, she grabbed her morpher on her belt

"Sabertooth-tiger," Trini managed to say while gagged.

The burst of electrical energy released from the morphing sequenced burned the creature, releasing it's grip. It screeched in pain before charging after Trini. She wasn't gonna play around anymore, Trini whipped out her power blaster and fired and fired again. Each blast sending the creature flying back and splattering slime tried to charge back, but by the fifth shot it exploded into goop that got all over Trini's visor.

Trini turned to see Aisha in the middle of kick to the Kim's face, knocking it to the ground. Trini fired five more shot before it exploded, smothering Aisha's face.

"You okay?" Trini asked, holstering her blaster.

"What, what, you are? And she was? Wha-what?" Aisha said, as the slime slid down her face.

Trini wiped the gunk off her visor and unfolded her mask, revealing her face.

"Yeah, I'm a superhero, and so is Kim. Well obviously not _that Kim,"_ Trini pointed to the huge burnt stain on the floor, "To be honest, I'm not sure what that was." Trini grabbed a jar in Aisha's house and scooped some of it up.

* * *

Tommy's feet crushed the dew lathered grass. Angel grove Park had a weird eeriness to it at night. The once populated benches and swing sets were now abandoned and only accompanied by the wind. Tommy wondered what was so important that Kim demanded that he and the others show up.

"Tommy," Kim shouted as she ran from of the darkness.

"Kim, wait, what's with the cheerleader getup?" He asked.

"Like don't worry about it, It's totally just nostalgia, but Tommy I got a for real emergency, where's everybody else?" Kim said as she grabbed Tommy's face hard with both hands.

The familiar red flash of Jason's teleporter beam came down, materializing Jason into the environment.

"Everybody, is tied up at the moment. What's the problem," Jason asked.

"Well, I was like totally strolling through the park, and I found an egg in the woods! And it was moving a little."

"Egg? What kind of egg?" Jason asked.

"I dunno, it was big as like a mountain, it wasn't normal," she said.

"Hmm, could be a problem," Tommy said.

"Take us there Kim," Jason said.

As they walked past the rusted gates of the park entry way, Tommy heard something in the distance. It was a quick sound and it was hard to make out, but it kinda sounded glass shattering. Another quick sound followed, this one made Tommy look behind him. It sounded like a short yell. Tommy wrote it off, maybe someone in the neighborhood dropped a vase and yelled in annoyance. Tommy just followed the others.

Kim brought them to the thick of the woods, where nothing could be seen but trees for miles. The whole time Kim kept talking about . . . well nothing, really. It seemed whatever came to her mind, she said. Tommy only remember that ever happening when she got really excited about something. Even then, not like this, and what would be so exciting anyway?

"Over here, boys," Kim said, pointing to abandoned truck, "It's in the back seat."

"I'll take a look at it," Jason said.

Then Tommy heard it again, another sound of shattering. Okay, Tommy thought, that couldn't be a coincidence. He had to check it out.

Tommy told Jason he was gonna check it out, and he let Tommy do it. However, Kim wasn't so pleased.

"Please, don't leave me," She said.

"It be okay. Kim," he said.

Tommy trekked off into the woods to follow the sound. He came across a little cabin with a broken window. He knelt down and crawled to the window and looked out. He saw two Kims tying up a blindfolded man. The Kims spotted him Morphed, Tommy ran away as the Kims chased him. He returned to the truck to already see Jason morphed and fighting off three more Kims.

* * *

Trini had to bring Aisha into the Command Center. She was involved now and it wouldn't be fair to leave her covered in the slimy remains of her friend without any explanation. Besides, the whole secret identity thing was more of a guideline than a rule anyway, it been broken a couple times before.

Billy took the sample she gave him and put it onto two separate slides. Billy pulled out a tiny electrode and gave one of the slides a little shock. The other sample on the other slide reacted the exact same as the one being shocked, like a mirror image.

"Whatever it is, it appears to have a telepathic connection to all of its parts."

Billy's communicator rang. He rolled his eyes an answered. "Zack? Yes, everything is fine. We don't need your help right now. Please, just rest your legs. Okay? Okay. I will see you later." Billy hung up. Trini figured it must of been the fifth time Zack had called him that week.

"Is there anything else I should know?" Billy asked

Trini turned to Aisha, who was gazing up at the high ceiling of the Command Center. Billy's question broke her wonderment. "It didn't want us to leave, and it oozed on me," Aisha said.

"Perhaps, it is a symbiotic organism trying to gain a new host for itself," Billy said. The emergence bell rang on Trini and Billy's communicator.

* * *

Tommy didn't get much satisfaction out of constantly punch Kim in the face. He never imagine the job would be so hard in such a weird way. He became stuck in this constant rhythm.

 _It's Okay. It's not really her._

 _Punch!_

 _It's not her._

 _Punch!_

 _It's not her._

 _Punch!_

Tommy and Jason were backed into a street corner as a whole cheerleading squad of Kimberlys flipped toward them, cheering the whole way. "Ready! Okay! You can't stop the joining! J-O-I-N…"

"Billy!" Tommy called on the communicator, "We need—" But before he could continue, he saw half the squad flip away with their blindfolded captives. "They got hostages," Tommy said, "They got civilians!"

* * *

"What do we do now?" Trini asked.

"I have a suggestion," Billy said as he head into the back of the room. He came back holding a thin metal collar. He wrapped it around his neck and pressed a red button in the center. Billy seemed to have transformed into Jason right before her eyes, and with another tap of the button, he was Tommy, then Zack, and finally Kimberly. Billy snapped the collar off and returned to his normal self.

"It is called M.A.S.Q.U.E, or Macro A—"

"Billy!" Trini yelled.

"Right," Billy said, "I invented it for whenever we need to properly commence a maneuver K. One of us could infiltrate the squadron of Kimberly-doppelgangers, and discover their plans for the civilians, but we need someone who can perfectly imitate Kim, right down to a T."

Trini looked behind her. "Like, say. . ."

"What?" Aisha said.

* * *

Today was a really weird day for Aisha, she was just prepared to get an A on her project so that she could have successful, artistic extracurricular on her permanent record, but now she learned her partner was a superhero and her friend was kidnapped by a slime beast, and she had to infiltrate them by wearing her friend's face.

"Have you spotted them yet?" Trini asked through Aisha's earpiece.

"Yeah." they dropped her off at the sighting of the clones and Aisha was careful to follow behind them while keeping her distance. They were flipping and cheering all the way to the outskirts of town.

"This thing is getting itchy," Aisha tugged at the metal collar.

"Do not touch it!" Billy said.

A shock went threw her finger, warping the holographic face.

"Ouch," she said, making one of the Kim clones twist their head back at her. Aisha quickly gave the clone a friendly wave and reassuring smile, the clone mirrored it back and went on it's way. _That was a close one._

"The M.A.S.Q.U.E is very temperamental," Billy said, "almost anything could break the projection."

"Got it. Hey I think I got something here." She saw the Kims break open the chained gates of the Angel Grove junkyard. They almost ripped the gates off the hinges as they pushed their tied up prisoners inside.

Aisha followed through a twisting path of junked cars until she saw it, the hive. It must of been hundreds, and hundreds of Kimberly's packed together into a relatively small space.

"I think I found their nesting area," Aisha said.

"What are they doing?" Trini asked.

Aisha described what she saw, all of the Kim's dropped off their prisoners in a small circle in the center, being held in the tailgates of old trucks.

"What else? What are they doing themselves?" Billy asked.

Aisha's eyes darted from one side to another. "Uh, I don't know, like Kimberly things, I guess."

She didn't know how to describe what was going because their was so much of it, one group of Kim's were climbing to the top of the highest moutains of junk imaginable then diving off, performing seven flips in the air before sticking the landing perfectly. Another group was just switching around lipstick that they found. "Girl, I think this shade is perfect for you, not for me," one said. The identical Kim across from it said, "Thanks, try this one. I think it's more your type." Another group went on and on about clothes, but it was weird. One Kim said it liked buying purses from "Louis Jacobs."

"Hey, girl, I love your necklace. Can i have a look at it."

Aisha swallowed air in her throat. "Oh please no, I think you'd much prefer these earrings," Aisha handed them to her.

"Thanks." The clone said before running off.

Aisha quickly ran off from the group and hid behind a she could talk, everything vanished into pink light.

* * *

"I lost her." Billy said.

"What do you mean, " Trini said.

"I mean, she's gone."

Trini saw Billy shift his chair from monitor to monitor, trying to get a fix on Aisha's location. A tiny red light flashed on one of the screens, Billy typed some information on his keyboard, then flipped the monitor to face Trini.

"I tracked the beam's energy signature to this station seventeen light years away," Billy said.

Trini looked at the spinning-top shaped object in the satellite picture. It looked worn down and in despair."What do you think this station was used for?"

"Hard to say," Billy said, "Perhaps, observation? Either way, the symbiote is there and probably Aisha as well."

"I'll call the others."

* * *

The light from the transport beam faded into the endless darkness of the station's interior. Trini activated her helmet's night vision to properly see the other three rangers around her. The room they teleported into as full destroyed and smashed wooden desks with papers covering the metal floor.

Trini picked up one of the papers, but she could not read the alien writing on it. All she got from it was a series circles of different sizes that were very close to one another, however, she notice that there was a huge red circle stamped over the smaller blue circles, obviously put there after the fact.

"Let's move out," Jason said as he pushed the button to open the sliding door. The door's arch sparked rapidly, causing electricity to rain on Jason before stopping. Tommy helped Jason push the sliding door open.

They wandered through the long hallway, each wall was lined with round, vault like doors with glass windows in the center, most of the windows have been shattered. Trini stuck her head into one of the broken windows.

"What do you think these are?" Trini asked.

"Given their small size, it's likely they're holding cells," Billy said.

"Looks like, whoever ran this place was really interested in these things," Tommy said.

"Rangers look," Jason said as he motioned them to follow him into another room. Tommy and Billy followed, Trini following close behind.

Trini put her hand on the arch.

 _Whoosh!_

 _What was that?_ she thought as she looked behind her. A piece of curved glass rolling on the floor. She looked around, but she was alone.

"Trini come on," Tommy said.

Trini took one step into room with them, shattering something. Picking it up, she saw that it was the top of a test tube. She looked up to see the other rangers playing with test tubes, and jars. They were lying on desks that were built into the floors. Each desk having a heating pad and sink, Trini instantly recognized the kind of room they were in. "It's a science lab."

"Of course," Jason said, "They must of been experimenting with something."

"Guys, over here," Billy said.

Trini and the others gathered around Billy at a busted monitor. He stuck his cell phone onto the monitor and tapped at the touch screen a few times."Just a moment," he said. On the monitor, a grainy video of a green skinned man in a white lab coat started playing. The alien spoke in a guttural language.

"Translating now," Billy said as he tapped on his phone.

The alien spoke to the camera: "Psychokinetic energy in bio-organic form. It could be useful for the growth of lost genetic material among other—" Billy fast forwarded the video.

The alien continued: "Zonar station log number 32, organism 23-B is showing active resistance to any experimentation, almost as if the organism indeed does have a consciousness of its own."

Billy fast forwarded again, but this time the alienwas gone, instead the back of the room was revealed, showing green men running around and screaming with what looked like cattle prods.

The alien reappeared in front of the camera. His coat been torn to shreds. "This is an emergence message to all nearby planets, if this station's self destruct does not activate within the next ten minutes, quarantine this area and destroy it as soon as possible. Do not come aboard the station, I repeat do not come aboard the station! If this organism leaves the station, then it will spread and infect all life on planet. I repeat, you mus destroy this—" Slime oozed from the top of the screen onto the alien's face. He screamed in agony until the video cut off.

"That settles it. We'll try to find Kimberly and Aisha, and then blow this thing away before it could take over the earth," Jason said.

"And if we can't find them?" Trini said.

"We must," Jason said.

A light clang hit the floor, alerting the rangers. Then another clang, it appeared to be foot steps. The ranges gathered by the doorway as something walked down the hallway to greet them.

The thing was out visual range of their night vison, but they could tell it was human shaped. It walked slowly toward them, revealing more of itself, it appeared to be a girl.

Trini peeled her eyes to see what was walking toward her."Kim?" she asked the thing. She screamed when she realized that Kimberly had a large hybrid-freak squawked before jumping into the air above them.

"Fire," Jason pulled out their blasters, but the creature flew swiftly and knocked them onto their rangers hid beneath the desks to avoid being grabbed by its talons.

"Billy, what is this thing," Jason yelled as he fired the blaster at the creature.

"My hypothesis," Billy ducked under the swooping prehistoric bird, "the organism must have absorbed bio-energy directly from Kim's power coin, replicating her Zord." The Kimberly-bird picked Billy off the ground, but a shot from Tommy made it drop him.

"It's too much, we gotta split up. It can't come after all of us," Jason said.

Trini saw all the boys run after three exitways. Trini looked for another one and ran for it.

The creature flew after her, and she could feel it's breath. She Jumped out of the way of one of its swipes. She hit the close button before jumping through the closing door. The creature slammed into the door.

* * *

Aisha's head was still spinning from the teleportation process, but she tried to hide that from the other Kims as she followed them in there single file line down the dark hallway. They were chanting the whole way down.

"Oh my gosh, the joining is here. Oh my gosh, the joining is now."

Aisha mumbled along, hoping they wouldn't notice how out of sync she was. She tried to discreetly tap her bud to see if she get to Billy and Trini, but no luck. Her heart quicken as she realized that she was alone with these . . . these things, whatever they were. She didn't know what they were or what they would do next.

The KIm in the front of the line opened the door, leading to the cargo bay. It was the size of half a football field with its wide open space only filled with barrels clumped together in some spots.

The lights finally came on, as more Kims walked down metal stairs from a bridge suspended thirty feet in the air.

"It's time . . . It's time." They chanted as they guided the prisoners onto a stack of barrels surrounded by pink cocoon.

"Alone no more . . . Alone no more," they said as they the Kims crowded around the prisoners, creeping closer to them. With each step, their feet melted into the pink ooze until all the Kims closes to the prisoners completely melted into the slime, crawling toward them.

Horrified, Aisha slowly backed away to the exit.

The three Kims in front of Aisha twist their heads to face her, three hundred and sixty degrees.

"Where are you going," one said.

"The joining is now," another said.

"Uh…." Aisha tried to come up with something, "I totally have to get my hair done first," Aisha let out a nervous laugh. She accidently bumped against the barrel, making the collar give her another shock.

"Ouch," Aisha rubbed her neck.

"I cannot feel you," another said.

One of them stretched out a slime tentacle yanked the collar from off her neck, breaking the hologram. The three of them released that horrible screech.

Aisha ran toward the exit, hearing at least one of them run after her.

* * *

Trini's footsteps echoed through the hallway, she's been wandering the station for ten minutes now, she was beginning to wonder if she was ever find, well anybody. However, in the corner of her eye she spot something glowing the darkness and turned the corner to find it.

It was a huge glowing pink cocoon hanging on the station wall. Inside the glowing orb Trini could see the shadow outline of a person.

This might be my only chance, Trini thought as she used her to cut open the sac, which gushed slime all over her suit. As she tore the cocoon open, she saw Kim's unconscious head flop out. Excited, Trini reached her arms deep inside to grab Kim's torso and pull her out.

When Trini pulled her slippery body of the cocoon, she noticed that this Kim wasn't wearing her cheerleader outfit. Instead she was wearing the leather and skirt she had on the last time they talked.

It's her, Trini thought, it's really her. Trini repeatedly slapped Kim's face to wake her up. Kim's eyes slowly fluttered open.

"Trini?" Kim said in a daze.

"Yes, oh Kim i'm so sorry," Trini said as she hugged her friends head. "We gotta get outta here," She said.

"And I know how," Kim pointed to the shredded cocoon, "When that freaky thing put me in there, I learned it's weakness. Follow me," Kim ran down the hall.

Trini followed, excited to have her friend back, only to be confused when she saw Kim run back towards her. "Run," she screamed. Trini saw the Kim-Pterodactyl fly toward them.

Trini fired her blaster at it, but it was no use. It flew so fast it knocked Trini off of her feet and picked Kim off the floor. Trini continued to fire at it while the bird pecked at Kimberly. A shot at the creature's head finally made it drop. Trini crawled to Kim to see if she was okay.

The creature lunged at them, before exploding into steam and slime. Trini looked across from her to see Jason and the others.

"You found Kim?" Jason asked.

"Yes," Trini said, "that thing got her really bad." Trini saw Kim grabbed her stomach and winced in pain.

"Help her up," Trini as she put Kim's arm around her shoulders, Jason putting her other arm around his.

"She says she knows where it's weakness is," Trini looked at Kim, " Where should we go."

"Down the left hallway, I tell you the rest as we go," Kim said through her apparent pain.

* * *

Aisha ran as she heard a couple of Kims flip their way toward her. She ran past a stairwell and quickly stopped and slid back around to run up the stairs. She looked behind her to find the Kim's were cartwheeling up steps at an incredible pace.

"J-O-I-N.." they screamed as they cartwheel.

Aisha tried to keep her head as best as she could while running for her life from psychotic cheerleaders. She knew she had the skills from track to out run them. She closed her eyes and imagined she was on the field with her parents in the crowd cheering her on. A bright summer day, and excitement in heart from knowing she was going to win, where she belonged.

With an extra burst she made it to the top of the stairs where another hallway was, lined with doors. Aisha slammed the open buttons for all the doors as she ran past them, before finding one to hide.

She quickly shut the door behind her and leaned her forehead on the door, trying to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding, her chest heaving as she she fought another breath. She was exhausted, yet kinda thrilled at the same time.

When she lifted her head off the door, she realized this was the only room she's been in that's had light in it. She turned around to see lamps hanging over a desk covered with monitors, each one showing grainy footage of other rooms. The chair in front of the desk shifted slightly.

"Who's there?" Aisha asked as she put her hand over the exit button.

"That's a good question," a girl's voice said from behind the chair.

The chair rotated around. Aisha's eyes widened, her hands trembled as she saw herself sitting in the chair across from herself.

"Huh . . . huh . . . what?" Aisha said.

"Exactly what I was thinking," the other Aisha said, pointing a blaster at her. This Aisha wore a torn up black military jumpsuit.

"Oh please don't shoot me. I was just trying to get some extra credit when it turned out my friend was a monster so my other brought me here and now I found myself wants to kill but i don't wanna myself to kill me…."

"Shut up!" the Aisha in black commanded, Aisha listened to herself. The Aisha in black lowered her blaster, "That's strange, you guys don't usually keep the act up for this long."

"What do you mean?" Aisha asked.

"I mean, usually when you're found out to be a fraud, when you can't even convince yourself that you are who you say you are, you usually immediately give up and attack," the Aisha in black said.

"I'm not one of those things! I'm Aisha Campbell!"

"No," the Aisha in black said with a smirk," I'm Aisha Campbell, the organism beamed me aboard here a month ago and fighting to survive here ever since. I thought I got rid of all my copies before they got to Kim, but i guess not.'

"But, but, that's impossible, I remember so many things…" Aisha said.

"You remember what you stole from my head after you tried to absorb into your weird, collective conscious, or whatever that green guy said," the Aisha in black said.

Aisha grabbed her head, "No, I am me. I know it. I…"

"And who are you exactly? You've been following Kim around years trying to be her and you knew weren't, and you tried to convince yourself you were other things that you weren't good at. You're not a journalist, you're not a chief, or a baseball player, or an artist as great Trini. So tell me, who are you?"

Her words cut like a knife. Everything she said made sense. Aisha's eyes dart around the room look for answers.

"I…..I….I."

As her eyes darted, she saw something on the lamp, a piece of slime sliding down from a leak in the ceiling, then she remembered when that Kim clone got the slime on Aisha's hands, how it seemed like Kim's hands were fusing into her's. It all clicked together in her mind.

"Yes," The Aisha in black said, reaching her hand out.

Aisha grabbed her hand.

"I… am not sure how you knew that I tried to impress Trini with art knowledge, when you were stuck here for a month," Aisha said.

"Uh," the Aisha in black said with wide eyes.

Aisha punched it in the face. It screeched as reformed into a half-Kim, half-ooze monster.

It lunged at her.

* * *

"Down there," Kim said, pointing to a door at the end of the hallway.

Trini pushed the open button, revealing the massive cargo bay area. The plates that made up the walls were now oozing with the pink slime, dripping down to the floor and crawling their way to the prisoners.

The prisoners screamed as the slimed had climbed its up the barrels and were now covering the prisoners' legs.

"We got to find a way to get across," Jason said.

Kimberly began to convulse in pain and fell on the floor. She grabbed her stomach and rolled around in agony.

Trini knelt down, opening her helmet. "Hold on, we're gonna get you out of here," Trini looked behind her to see that the slime was slowly covering the door they just came from. She looked in front her to see the boys desperately try to get to the prisoners, but every time they took a step toward the river of slime, little tentacles would pop out that they would have to shoot down. With inch that the slime closer to them, Trini lost a little more hope.

"Just go without me," Kim said, eyes closed.

"No, I'm never gonna leave you again," Trini said.

Kim opened her eyes. "No you're not . . . not anymore, girlfriend," Kim smiled devilishly as her jacket morphed into her cheerleader outfit.

* * *

The Kim's grip was almost crushing Aisha's arm as it shoved her into the blinding light behind the open door. When Aisha's eyes adjusted, she realized she was the on the bridge at the top of the cargo bay.

Aisha looked over the railing to see the rangers being surrounded by the pink slime and another Kim. No, she thought, this can't be it, this can't be how it ends.

"Try to relax girlfriend," the Kim holding her said with a smile, "the joining is gonna give you a makeover that you need, that all of us need."

Aisha swallowed her fear as she desperately looked for a way out. The Kim dragging her to the stairwell. She caught in the corner of her eye, an electricity box at the other end of the bridge, maybe fifty away. She remember how it reacted to get shocked in Billy's lab, maybe she could fry it on a large scale.

Trying to recreate what she learned from that one women's self defense class she took that one summer, Aisha wrapped her leg around the Kim's leg and head budded it, the Kim lost it's balance and fell. Aisha quickly got to her feet before it grab her. She pulled her hair pin out and booked it.

* * *

Trini and the others backed up as the Kim got up, releasing slime tentacles from its back. Trini looked behind her to see that the slime had completely blocked the door. Tommy and Billy tried to melt it down with their blasters, but it was reforming to fast. Jason stepped in front of the creature, raising his sword in front of him.

"Come on, come on," Jason said, reflexly swinging his sword every time one of its tentacles twitched.

Trini looked over to see Tommy and Billy getting a little closer to reaching the door's controls. She turned her head up to see Aisha running across the bridge. If I didn't want to believe that the thing was Kim so badly, we wouldn't have been stuck here, Trini thought. She knew she had to find a way to slow that thing down, to get its attention. The idea came to her, she demorphed.

It's tentacles lunged at Jason.

Trini ran pass Jason, jumping over and wrapping her arms around the Kim into a tight hug.

"From the bottom of my heart. . ." Trini whispered into the Kim's ear as it melted and wrapped itself around her.

"No! What are you doing?!" Jason yelled.

"What I do best," she said as the slime consumed her face.

* * *

Aisha was still feet away from the box, she tried to keep up her breath and and push her legs as far as they could. Her calves burning with the effort. She didn't look back at the Kim chasing her, though she knew that it was now running on all fours like a cheetah to catch up with her. She kept her eyes closed, trying put herself back to that day on the track, only this time she needed that gold metal.

She opened her eyes to see that the box was only a few feet away, she smiled as tried to burst over to the box.

The Kim pounced on her shoulders, knocking her to the ground. Aisha tried to crawl away as the Kim began to melt on top of her.

* * *

One of Jason's greatest fears has just come to life, she was gone and he had seen it happen. His sword trembled in his hands as the cocoon that once was Trini flopped into the river of slime being swept away from them. Jason's fearful gaze was only broken by Tommy's words.

"Got it," Tommy said, as the exit door finally lifted into the air.

Jason's heart sank even lower than it was before as he saw even more Kimberly clones waiting on the other side. Tommy and Billy raised their guns as they put their backs to Jason's.

Five more rose out of the river of slime around Jason, they were surrounded. Jason nodded to his fellow, who nodded back. They all knew there was nothing they could do, except the best they could do.

The Kimberlys laughed as Jason raised his sword above his head, as he was about to strike, the Kim's stopped laughing. All of them began to shake and convulse, their body proportions began to shift in size and mass.

Within seconds all the Kim's shifted into copies of Trini. Jason gave a confused look at Tommy then saw the clones look as confused as they were. The clones shifted again into Aisha, and then again into an overweight construction worker, and again into a scrawny guy in a business suit.

Jason looked over to see the prisoners were almost completely consumed by the symbiote, leaving only their heads free. Jason looked over to see the clones convulsing and shifting rapidly and independently of each other, creating mismatched hybrids of several people.

"Who am I?! Who am I?!" they all screamed.

They continued to shake until they all raised their arms above their heads and extended them grew taller, skinnier, and greyer, until they became, much to Jason's surprise, trees.

* * *

Aisha gazed as the thing got off of her and shifted between the shapes of many people. Aisha quickly turned and reached to open the box.

It wrapped a tentacle around her ankle and tried to reel her back. Aisha managed to flip the box open, but had to grab onto the edge of it with her fingertips as she was being pulled away. The stress was too much and she slipped.

"Who am I?! Who am I?!" The creature screamed as it reeled Aisha back.

Aisha was flipped onto her back as the slime wrapped around her legs. She fought to separate her legs as she slid beneath the thing.

The thing then started going from pink to pale grey as it's head turned into a skull and branches came from out of it's now skeletal body.

The sculptor, she thought, as the creature laid frozen. Aisha broke the crackling tentacle off her legs and ran back to the electricity box. The creature wrapping another tentacle around Aisha's arm one last time before Aisha jammed her hair pin into the box.

The thing screamed as it absorbed the high voltage electricity.

* * *

Jason looked in amazement as the dead trees in front of him formed into screaming, convulsing, pillars of slime before exploding into smoke. The river of slime beneath him crusted over and evaporated into the air.

As soon as the floor was clear, Jason and the others ran across it to get to the cocoon holding Trini. The cocoon withered and deteriorated even before Jason and the others began tearing it apart.

* * *

Trini's eyes fluttered open, dark shadows above slowly formed into the familiar shapes of her friends. They all hugged her as they pulled her up.

"You really are something, you know that?" Jason said.

"I guess," embarrassment flowed through Trini, "What about Kim?"

The rangers ran over to the crackling cocoon over the prisoners, Billy guided them off the barrels, while the others digged through the drying pink shell. Trini tore off a big chunk, revealing Kim's face.

"Kim? Kim?" Trini said, tapping her face.

Kimberly stuck her pinky into the air. "I wish I could keep promises as well as you can." Trini locked her pinky tight around her's. Some excited laughter came down from above them. All the rangers looked up at the bridge.

Aisha fumbled up the railing, her hair frizzy and smoking, and laughed down at the rangers. "Wow, that was fun," she said, "Are you guys accepting interns? Because, I am totally interested! I can send you my resume tomorrow, and I'm perfectly willing to work late hours!"

They all laughed together. "Well, how could we say no?" Jason said.

Within hours, the rangers were able to beam the prisoners back to their homes, blindfolded the whole time so that they there was no way any of them could trace this incident back to Kim or anyone of them. Billy setup detonated charges throughout the entire station to go off as soon as everybody was off board. With the station blown into fiery smithereens, they hoped would never have to deal with the symbiote again.

Trini and Aisha got an "A+" on their assignment. Ms. Appleby told them that the sculptors that really pushed them over into getting an A+ were the sculptors: _Human Nature_ and _The Glob_

Trini decided to give hanging out with Kim's other friends another shot. And you know what? It wasn't nearly as boring as she thought it would be, especially with Aisha there to talk about things with. In fact, Aisha didn't seem as into the fashion stuff as she use to. The three girls found that they loved being with each other the most.

* * *

"So, why did you two bring me in here, again?" Trini asked as she sat across Principal Caplan's desk.

"Well," said, "given your excellent performance after all these years of being in my little club."

"And all the long, hard, hours you put into helping others through the school's volunteer work," Caplan added.

"We thought you might be interested in this," Appleby said. Caplan handed her a folded piece of paper.

Trini grabbed it and read it outloud: "Dear parent or guardian, Due to your child's excellent performance in the arts and their clear and obvious commitment to improving the lives others, we invite your child to join us as a member of Angel Grove's Young Artist Society. Your child can get an excellent start by joining us during our goodwill tour through Switzerland this summer. Your child be able to use their artistic skills to improve the lives of many of Switzerland's underprivileged…." Trini trailed off in awe.

"What do you think, Trini?" Appleby asked.

"I...uh….uh…..wow….."

"This is a golden opportunity Trini, not only to help others, but yourself too. Many of the world's greatests artists come by these tours and seek out the possible future game changers of the art world," Caplan said, "it's a networking gold mine you can't miss out on."

"So, what do you say?" Appleby asked with a warm smile.

"Um, I'll have to think about it," Trini said. Right now, she realized that she was holding in her in her own two hands, and they were shaking.


	4. Skeletons in the Closet

Her vision blurred as her eyes moved from one side of the Command Center to the other. The bright lights leaked from the command console and swirled around her in rainbow colored bands of light.

The room itself shaked, but very slowly, like the way a ship bobs up and down on the water. She reached out to grab a console to keep her balance, but when she reached for it, it slid away from her. Again and again, her hand reached out for the console, but it move farther away. In fact, the whole room seemed to be moving away from her.

She tried to run after it, but it didn't matter how hard she moved her legs, she knew she wasn't going anywhere. She was just running in place, unable to move forward, like someone was holding her back.

This fight to move only made her feel even more dizzy. WIth her head being to disoriented to take it all, she collapsed. She fell unto the black void left behind by the Command Center.

"Trini?" someone called out to her.

Hovering over her, Jason and Tommy stood there. They looked at each other, confused, but then stared down at Trini with black beady eyes and twisted smiles. "Shoosh," they both said with their fingers over their mouths, "everything is going to be okay."

They both stretched out their hands over her eyes, blocking the light

* * *

Heart racing, hands trembling, chest heaving,Trini jumped out of her bed as the banging of the ancient bell grew louder. Ripping off her mask, she found that it was only Stanley trying to call her. _Seriously need a less creepy ringtone,_ she thought as she put Stanley on speaker phone.

"Hey, uh, sorry if I— I woke you up, just remember that you said to call a 9 o'clock sharp, so I just did," Stanley stammered on.

"It's fine Stanley. It's okay," she said, stretching her shoulder muscles.

"Good, uh, so I'm about to arrange the flight right now, but— but I have to ask, are you sure you wanna take a whole week of your time away, just to go to Angel Grove? You know we have other things going on?" Stanley said.

"Of course I know that," she said, applying her anti-wrinkle cream, "but some things are more important. I haven't seen these people in a long time, and when they ask me to drop by, i'm not going ignore them in favor of the queen or anybody else."

"I guess I can understand that," Stanley said.

"Good, now just tell me what's next after I get back." She slipped on her silver robe and headed for the balcony.

"Well, you should start to prepare for dinner with the queen when you get back. Also, there's that press release coming up for the charity, and you know they're gonna want to interview you, Plus, you have to make the proper arrangements to get _Neo-Barbie_ into the Metropolitan Museum. And . . ."

As Stanley went on, Trini pulled back the curtain, and the sun light flooded into the room, bouncing off the granite tile floor and illuminating the handcrafted wooden furniture.

She looked out the balcony to see the familiar blue tides wash in and out of the beach front, the light warming her face.

 _This is going to be a great day._

* * *

She looked out the window as her limo drove past the golden skyscrapers that made up Angel Grove. It was amazing how much the city had changed since she left. Trini remembered the days when it considered a relatively large small town, but now it had grown to give Los Angeles a run for its money.

The buildings stretched out far above what she could see. Her eyes could barely make out the flying vehicles that swooped by the digital billboards that made up the entire walls of some skyscrapers. _Welcome to the City of Dreams_ , one billboard read while showing a picture o the city's colorfully vibrate skyline at night. An animated board of the red ranger helmet flashed bold words the bottom of the screen: _We've Got Your Back!_

 _Things really have changed._ She remembered the Power Rangers first year in Angel Grove, when they always had suspicion thrown at them from the outside, and they had to remain hidden from the rest of the world, but over time that suspicion just melted away, the public trusted them. After Zordon passed away, there wasn't a reason to hide anymore.

"I hate the traffic here, and I hate crowds," Stanley said, straightening his bow tie.

"Would you relax? Only you would find something to complain about while on the greatest place on earth," Trini said. Some days she wondered why she even hired him. Stanley always look uncomfortable in any situation. The tiny man would squirm in his tweed jacket, running his finger through his red curly hair, like a kid impatiently waiting the in the doctor's office.

But as squirmy as he was, Stanley was an excellent assistant and manager of Trini's time. He always knew how to work her schedule to get the most done with each passing day. Though he complained a lot, he never complained about being overworked and dedicated long hours into the night to fix any problem Trini had, like the time he— Actually, now that Trini thought about it, she couldn't remember a specific time Stanley helped her through a problem, or anything about him at all. _How did I meet him again?_

They jolted as the limo came to a dead stop.

"Oh, what now?" Stanley said.

Through the window, she t all the cars in all the lanes stopped. Everyone was jumping out of their vehicles to crowd around a cloud of smoke billowing in the distance. _Now this looks interesting_. She grabbed her handbag and hopped out of the limo.

"Where are you going?" Stanley yelled.

"I'm gonna go say hi," Trini said as she ran down the street.

She passed all the yellow taxis to join the crowd, and swam through the sea of people snapping photos, fighting to get to the front. Darting around the back of heads, she saw that they were gathered around the ten foot tall golden statue of all the rangers.

Some kind of snake monster quickly slithered on ground, looking for an exit. The snake creature lifted its head a foot over the happy people. It opened its mouth, showing off its great fangs with a hiss. It coiled its head back, ready to strike the people. Everyone grew even more excited and started snapping pictures of it.

A pink arrow flung into its neck, causing it to convulse as electricity ran through its hulking mass. Trini smiled, she always loved seeing this unfold.

As the creature convulsed, Jason beamed in front of the crowd and sliced its tail off, the tail turning to crumbling rock and the creature falling to the ground. Hungry for vengeance, the snake lunged at Jason, but not before Billy came from behind and wrapped his lance around its neck. The other rangers beamed in next to Jason and they all fired at the creature, reducing it to dust in the wind.

The crowd roared as they snapped pictures through the dust cloud of the fallen enemy. Trini fought her way to the police barrier in front of the crowd, the cops occupied with trying to get their picture taken with Tommy and Zack. All the rangers took their helmets off and waved at the insane crowd, Kim and Billy signing autographs.

"Hey guys over here," she called to them, "it's Trini! Look I'm back guys! I got your invitation and . . ."

The rangers beamed away, without even giving her a look.

 _I guess they just didn't see me_ , she thought. Yeah, that must of been it, they're probably swamped by people all the time, It would make sense. There was still plenty of time to see them later.

In all the commotion, Trini had completely forgotten that she dropped her bag. She looked around for it, moving around the now clearing cloud of people. She found it a couple of feet behind her and picked it up.

The bag bit her.

She dropped the bag and looked at her hand to see that it was fine. No cuts, no blood, not even a red mark. _Must of been a shock_ , she thought based on the slight tingle she felt between her fingers, her bag must of caught some static electricity somehow.

"Trini!" Stanley called from a few feet away, "come on! We gotta check in!"

"Alright," she said, gazing at the bag. _It's probably nothing._ She slung the bag over her shoulder ran back to Stanley.

* * *

Trini typed a message to Billy: ' _So, how does 3:00 sound?'_ She waited in her hotel room for an hour before Billy got back with her.

 _'Sure, we can fit you in at 3_ ,' Billy's message read.

 _Fit me in? They invite me over and then their not even sure if they can take time out to see me,_ she thought, _What could be making them so busy?_

In the corner of her eye, she saw an old image of the Power Rangers on the T.V. She unmuted out of curiosity. A female news anchor's voice spoke over old footage of the rangers during a battle: "Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Power Rangers arrival to Angel Grove. Here at channel four, we will give you a recap of their history, and more."

 _Oh, this should be fun._ Trini highered the volume. The anchor summarized the first two years of their existence, but Trini thought it was weird how they skipped all the controversy that happened after they showed up. No mention of the tensions the team had with the public or with the E.S.B, and the Green Ranger was barely a footnote in the story.

The anchor continued: "After ten long years of struggle, the rangers were finally able to find and execute known intergalactic dictator, Lord Zedd." Trini remembered that day she got the call from Jason about that. She remembered because it was only after a year after she officially retired from ranger duty. . . or. . . something like that.

"Not long after the victory, team leader, Jason Lee Scott, decided it was time to reveal themselves to the public, sharing their technology with the world," the anchor said. _That was a crazy day too._

"Where are they now? Former Yellow Ranger, Trini Kwan, retired from the team after the first two years to pursue a career in art, she has since become one of the world's leading philanthropists. The others still perform ranger duty when necessary, but have pursued over things. Zachary Taylor became a spokesperson for _Xtreme Sports_ , Billy Cranston now assists on NASA space missions, Jason Scott and Kimberly Hart both moonlight motivational speakers. After the break, you get the chance to get into the minds of these heroes with our in depth interviews with each ranger."

 _Hey! They didn't ask me for an interview!_

There was a knock at the door. Trini shut off the T.V and jumped out of bed.

 _Splash!_

She shivered in shock as she felt ice cold water fall all over her body. Drenched, she was absolutely drenched in the freezing liquid. _What th—_ She looked up, but there wasn't even a leak of water dripping down from the ceiling. It was completely dry.

"Trini, it's me, open up," Stanley said from behind the door.

She opened the door. "Stanley, I think there's something wrong with the plumbing," she said, "one second I'm fine, the next i'msoaked."

Stanley gave her a small smirk and short giggle. "That's because you just got out of the shower, silly. You told you me you were gonna take one after we checked in," he said.

"What?" Trini looked to see that she was wearing a white bathrobe. _Did I have this on earlier?_ She thought. The Image of her pulling open the shower curtain did begin to hazelly enter her mind. _I guess I just forgot._

"So, we're going at three?" Stanley said.

His words broke Trini out of her confusion. "Yeah, wait . . . you said we?"

"Please, it's not everyday you get to meet a Power Ranger," he said, pressing his hands together.

"I was a Power Ranger," she said.

"Oh, you know what I mean. Please?".

Trini couldn't help but see the eager little boy in Stanley. Who was she to say no?

"Alright, but no complaining," she said.

"Deal."

* * *

"Who?" The voice from the speaker said.

"Trini Kwan!" She said, bending her torso over the limo driver to talk to security booth herself.

"I'm sorry madam, but your name is not on the clearance list," the voice said.

She pounded her fist on the limo door. "That's ridiculous, I was a Power Ranger! They're expecting me."

"Mam, if you don't calm—" the voice stopped and she heard the sound of shuffling papers coming out of the speaker. The voice spoke again: "Alright Ms. Kwan, you're clear to enter."

"Thank you," Trini breathed out

The doors of the electric fence swung open and Trini's limo drove through the paved road leading to the Command Center. Trini remembered the last time she visited they had just started putting in the road. Jason said he wanted the Power Rangers to be more open, but he still wanted to be cautious, hence the fence.

The road led up another ten miles before approaching the mountain the Command Center was carved into. There was another security checkpoint at the base of the mountain, a face recognition camera. After that, it was another, six miles up the windy road on the mountain. They approached one last security checkpoint as their limo was locked into a tiny parking lot with a fence surrounding it, on the four corners of the fence stood armed guards.

Trini and Stanley were cleared to enter the building.

Trini led Stanley into Billy's old workshop, where the old metal shelves that held all of Billy's inventions were now replaced with a rotating conveyor belt running throughout the area. Trini smiled as Stanley stood, mouth gaped, in awe of the place. Billy came out from around the corner with clipboard and a lab coat.

"It's nice to have you back," Billy shook Trini's hand before snapping his head back to his clipboard.

"It is great. I just thought it would amazing if we all got back together again," Trini said.

"Yes, definitely," Billy said robotically, not even turning his head away from the board. "How was your flight over here?" he asked.

"Oh it was . . . uh . . . it was well—" Her brain stopped. How was the flight? She realised she couldn't remember a thing about the flight over here. Even after all the flights she has taken overseas for her job, Trini always remembered all of them. Going to the airport never became mundane and there was always a weird story to tell, but now she was drawing a blank. There had to be something. . .

"Hey, ," Stanley stepped in front of Billy, "could you please give me a just a little peek at what you are working on?"

"I do not know about that," Billy said.

Trini snapped back into reality. "Oh come on Billy, he practically begged me to take me to take him. Show him something."

"Alright, follow me," Billy said.

Billy walked them over to his desk. On it stood a silver, candlestick shaped, stand. On top of the stand was a blue energy orb. Trini and Stanley gazed inside the orb to see billions of tiny particles moving around at incredible speed.

"It's beautiful." Trini thought it was prettier than anything she had made herself, "What is it?"

"I call it the Sonic Atomizer, what you are looking at is the solution to the world's energy crisis. It's not quite stable yet, but I think I'm on the verge of a breakthrough," Billy said.

"And on the right, you'll see are little lab here run by our science expert," A familiar voice said.

Trini turned around. It was Jason. He was wearing the khaki button down shirt and shorts that a camp counselor would wear, complete with merit badge sash. He led a troop of similarly dressed kids into the lab.

"Now remember kids," Jason said, "I was once a little trooper myself a long time ago, so if you listen to your parents, practice helping people everyday, and stay away from drugs, you can might be a Power Ranger yourself one day!"

All the kids wowed in amazement. She wanted a piece of this action, so she walked over to Jason. "What do you got going on over her?" Trini asked.

Jason looked over. "Oh hi," Jason motioned for her to come closer, "kids, say hi to my friend, Trini" She waved to the crowd, but she didn't exactly get the same amazed look, or even a "hi", just confused looks.

"Who are you?" A blue-eyed kid with curly blond hair asked.

"Well I was ranger like Jason back in the day," She said.

"Which one?" a kid in the back asked.

"The Yellow Ranger," She said.

"LAME!" At least half of the kids yelled.

"Hey now, I don't-" Trini started before Jason tapped her on the shoulder.

"I gotta go," Jason said, "I promised the camp I would hang with these kids for the day and show them a good time."

"Really? I was kinda hoping we could all-" Trini started.

"Maybe next time," Jason said, leading the kids away.

Stanley walked over to her. "Is everything okay boss?"

"I guess," Trini was hoping that she would be getting of the welcome wagon than what she had been getting. It seemed like she invisible, that was a feeling she hadn't had for years, before she met any of these people.

Zack walked by holding two supermodels in each arm. He was wearing a golden jumpsuit and golden brimmed sunglasses."Hey Billy, you know where I could get some food for Teresa and Veronica?"

"Zack, I haven't seen you in ages!" Trini said.

"What? Oh right," Zack pulled a dvd box and a pen out of his jacket and signed it, "It's always nice to meet a fan." Zack handed her the DVD. She saw the cover of Zack in the middle of an exercise pose. The title, _Hip Hop Kido: 7 Easy Steps to Fitness_ , was printed on it in purple. "Actually Billy, I just remembered where we can go, come on ladies," Zack said before walking off.

 _He didn't even recognize me?_ she thought. In the corner of her eye, she saw Kim and Aisha walk toward the exit."Hey Kim! what's up?!" Trini yelled as she ran toward them _Kim's gotta be happy to see me, she's gotta._

Kim pulled off her gigantic sunglasses off of her face. She stared at Trini the same way she would stare at a crushed cockroach. "Oh. Hey Trini," Kim said with exhaustion in her voice.

"I was hoping we could—"

"Like sorry, I'm too busy. Me and Bestie over here are going to the salon, and we will be busy all day. Right girlfriend?" Kim asked Aisha.

"Totally," Aisha said, pulling down on her identical sunglasses and smacking her gum loudly.

They walked off. _Bestie?_ Trini thought. It had been a while since she's talked to Kim, but has it really been that long? Was she really that angry about Trini leaving?

Tommy came up to Trini wearing a jacket with a bunch of corporate logos on it. He flashed a smile decorated with golden and diamond studded teeth."Hey Trini, what's up?"

"Nothing much, apparently," she said.

"Trini, please ,you have to get up," Tommy said.

"What?" Trini asked.

"I said do you want a soda," Tommy said. He pointed to a little blue square on his shoulder pad. "Because, I got this sweet deal with Pepsi's new citrus—"

"No, no, you said something else. You said I should 'get up'?" she asked.

"I didn't say that," Tommy said.

Trini accidently knocked into Billy's desk, hitting the button that turned the orb around the Sonic Atomizer off. The ball of particles flew around the room destroying everything in its way. Jason tackled a kid to the ground to save him from being hit by it. Tommy fires a blaster at it, destroying it. Billy drops to his knees, and screams into the air.

"Maybe we should go," Stanley said.

"I guess so," Trini said.

* * *

She spent the next couple of days in Angel Grove seeing the sights that the town had to offer. She still had a couple more days in town before her flight back to . . . her house. . . her state. . . her country? So, she was nervous about seeing the rangers again, but Billy messaged her again out of the blue.

 _Hey, everything is fine. I think you should come back again before you go,_ it read.

 _Are you sure?_ she sent back.

 _Of course_ , another one read.

Well, if they were willing to see her again, then what could it hurt to go back? Trini left a voice message to Stanley that she would be heading out. Stanley told her that his stomach wasn't feeling very good, and she should go without him.

The limo took her to the gate at the electric fence. It was a little weird because they didn't even talk to the security booth. As soon as they pulled up, the gate opened. Trini couldn't help but smile at the thought that maybe the security guard learned his lesson. They parked in the fenced off parking lot, but the guards weren't there.

When she approached the door, it slid open revealing the Command Center to be in utter shambles as sparks flew through the darkness. The accident she caused was bad, but it wasn't this bad.

She ran into the darkness to find Billy crushed and unconscious under a metal shaked his arm, but he didn't respond at. She looked over to see Jason crushed under rubble, with only his arm and his head sticking out.

That's when she heard it, the laugh. A very slow, meticulous laugh echoing throughout the command center, as if the person was pronouncing every single, individual 'Ha'. The source of the laughter came into the light.

"Stanley?" Trini said

Stanley stood their with a malicious grin. His tweed clothes were almost rotting off of his body, his bow tie hanging off his collar, his eyes black. He laughed more as his skin began rotting away, thinning out his face into a skull. "Hello little one," he said.

Her heart raced as she remembered that voice very well, the voice that lead to end of her sleep for many years, the voice that beckoned her to jump off the cliff every night, the voice in her dreams. The voice belonged to the monster that Zedd placed under her bed, the skeleton in her closet. "Bones?"

"Back from the dead! Well, in a manner of speaking," he said. He continued to laugh at his own joke, laughing so hard the left side of his jaw became loose from his face. He raise an index finger up at Trini, then turn his head to side, grab his jaw and popped it back into place.

"Wha— Wha— Wha— What?!" she yelled.

"Yes, for years I've been waiting for this day," Bones whispered, " The day I take my vengeance on you, little one. At first, I just wanted to kill you, but then I decided to wait for a time when I could hurt you the worst way possible. And it happened, Trini. You brought me right to the other Power Rangers, and now they're all dead, because of you."

She ran for it. She bursted out of the Command Center and ran as far as she could she could, all while his voice whispered into her ear: "You know you can't run from me, little one." She ran fast, digging her feet into the grass . . . grass?

She stopped and looked around. Where's the limo? Where's the mountain or the Angel Grove desert? She realized she was now standing in the middle of a grassy area with dead trees everywhere.

"Oops," Bones whispered behind her, "lost my train of thought."She fell onto the grey grass and crawled away from him. His long coat floated over his skeletal body, like smoke. He place his wide brimmed hat over his cranium."You know hard it can be to focus when you're having fun!"

The ground shook and cracked and separated, opening a gigantic crevice. She on tight to the grass, but she couldn't. The grass dissolved into the sand of the Angel Grove desert.

That's when it all made sense to her. The grass was fake, everything was fake. It was all a dream, another one of Bone's allusions. That's why she couldn't remember anything, there was nothing to remember. She looked down to find that they were now standing at the peak of the mountain, a hundred feet above the ground.

She got up and walked over to the edge. "Come with me little one," Bones said, " It will be easier, far easier than what you are thinking off."

Without even looking at him, she said: "I'll jump, then I'll wake up."

"Maybe, maybe not. Are you brave enough to find out?" he asked. "It's a long way down."

"I have bigger things to be afraid off than heights."

She dove off the edge.

* * *

The darkness that surrounded her dimmed into light. Very slowly and gradually, shadowy figures came into focus. As the light the light returned, the figures formed into familiar faces, and their sounds into familiar voices.

"Trini? Trini?" one of the voices said.

When the light returned she saw Tommy and Jason kneeling over her, the others standing in the background. The shock of it all made Trini jump up. "Wow, it's okay," Tommy said, holding her shoulders.

"What happened?" she asked.

"We don't know, you just passed out on us," Jason said, "we tried everything to wake you up." Jason and Tommy pulled out a wet bucket and one of Billy's electric probes.

She looked around the Command Center in exasperation, then back at the objects in the boy's' hands. Everything shot back into her memory. "Bones!" she said.

"Bones?" Jason said.

"Yeah, he's back, I don't know how, but he's back, and now he has some kind of control over my dreams," she said.

"Then hopefully, we can take him out like we did last time. If he can knock you out, then his skull must be somewhere in the Command Center." Jason stood up. "Alright rangers, let's split up. Billy and Zack, you two go check out the vehicle hanger, Tommy and Kim, you check out the main hallway. Me and Trini will look through the basement. Let's move!"

What they called the basement of the Command Center, was the deepest the levels of the base. It was where the Command Center Power Reactor was kept and was only occasionally visited by the rangers when Billy performed maintenance on the reactor or when they needed the extra storage space. There was very light sources down there, only a few ceiling lamps and whatever light emitted from the reactor that reflected on the metal pipes that surrounded Trini and Jason.

Trini and Jason walked over the metal bridge that hung over the coolant pipes. Still a little afraid even the most minor of heights, Trini instinctively grabbed the railing. Why was it all sandy? They were pretty far away from the desert on the get their minds off the humidity of the place, Trini and Jason talk about the dream she had.

"So I was teaching to a group of boy scouts?" Jason asked.

"Yeah, It was actually kind of adorable how much you were into it," she said.

"Huh, that's funny, I don't remember really telling any of you guys that I was a boy scout. It's not exactly something I like to think about," Jason said.

Trini stopped underneath a ceiling lamp. "Really? I mean, you must of, right? How could I have dreamed it then?" she asked, but Jason seemed just as confused as she light above her was growing in ridiculously bright. She looked up to see what was up with it.

It was the sun, the light from the sun was heavy as it illuminated the blue sky. She snapped her head from side to side to see that they were now walking inside a crack between two rock walls in the Angel Grove desert. On her left, she caught a glimpse of the bridge railing fading into the rock.

"We're still in a dream!" she said.

Jason turned to her, eyebrow raised. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"What do you mean? We were after Bones, remember?"

Jason squinted his eyes and tilted his to the side. "Huh?" he said, approaching her, "Trini we we destroyed Bones a while ago." He place his hand on her forehead. "Are you feeling okay?"

 _He's gone_ , she thought. He's been sucked into whatever reality Bones has created for him, just like she was earlier. She needed to think of something fast. Pulling Jason's hand away, she said: "Quick, tell me. You were a member of the boy scouts?"

"Yeah actually, how did you know that?" Jason asked.

"I know because we are in your dream right now!" she said, "Bones is back and he's messing with all our minds. You have to wake up!" She slammed her hand on the top of Jason's head.

He backed away from her. "That's crazy," he said.

"Is it? Where is everybody else right now, huh? Where is Tommy and Kimberly?"

"Who's Tommy?" he said.

The rock wall next to them exploded into a grand fireball. They hit the ground as as rocks flew over them. She lifted her to face the smoke, and a shadow formed in front of her eyes. The shadow grew as it approached, emerging from the smoke. The more of it she saw, the more she realized that maybe this wasn't Jason's dream after all.

The boot of the Green Ranger stomped within an inch of her face.

* * *

Tears ran down Tommy's green eyes as his muscles forcefully pushed him toward them. Each limb was consumed in burning pain with every movement. His mouth twitched as he tried with every fiber of his being to stop himself from saying what _he_ wanted him to say. "Your angel of death has come for you," Tommy said.

"I don't think so," the red ranger said before morphing.

His hand contorted itself into a fist before repeatedly punching itself into the red ranger's lower rib. The Red Ranger stopped dead in his tracks and folded into the impact. Tommy's other fist forced itself into the visor of the ranger's helmet, knocking him to the ground.

Gazing down at the fallen ranger beneath his feet, It was like watching the worst horror movie imaginable. He was strapped to a chair, forced to watch himself break bones and hear the cries for mercy. Nothing could be done, his eyes burned as he struggled to turn away, to get away from himself.

Something scratched his shoulders, gripping into them, holding them tighter than any constrictor snake. In the corner of his eye, he could see _him_ coming with his horrible fake grin and red and silver face.

"You see my child? This is what you were made to be, don't fight it. That will only make things worse," Zedd said.

"No," Tommy managed to whisper.

"I can make you do whatever I so desire, my child," Zedd said

"I won't . . ."

"Just let it be . . . kill him."

His hand slipped the dagger out of his holster. The ranger looked up at him, Tommy could see the ranger's eyes through the cracked visor. He could see the glassiness in his eyes. He had given up. All this man had was a hope for mercy. Looking into his eyes made his heart sank for reasons he couldn't explain. Watching himself do this to him was going to make his core implode. Tommy's fingers wrapped themselves around the ranger's neck. His other hand raised the dagger over the ranger's chest.

The girl grabbed his wrist as he began his plunge. His arm rattled as it tried to merge with the Red Ranger's heart, but she kept holding it back. Did it really matter? There was no she was strong enough to keep him back for long. He didn't even want to look at her. There was no point.

"Tommy," she said. The voice, the sound it made when she said his name, there was something awfully familiar about. He slid his eyes over to look at her, to really look at this person.

"It's over," she said, struggling against his arm, "You don't have to do this anymore." Her voice was so warm, so were her wide eyes and her round face. She wasn't afraid at all, like she knew exactly who he was.

"I must, I am a weapon of Lord Zedd," he heard his voice say.

"No, you are Tommy Oliver, you're a passionate, funny person. You're a great martial artist, a great ranger, and a great friend. You broke free from Zedd a long time ago. This is Bones trying to trick you, fight it!" she said.

"Lies," Zedd hissed in his ear. He wrapped his talons over Tommy's throat, squeezing out the all of his air. "Does this not feel real to you, my child? Is this not sufficient enough? Real Enough?" Zedd released his grip. "Kill him!"

"No. . ." Tommy dropped the dagger.

The earth shaked, the sun grew brighter, and Zedd began to fade into the light. As Zedd screamed, his metal face rusted and crumbled apart. In its place, was Bones, grimacing in agony.

 _Flash!_

* * *

Billy fumbled through his drawer of parts and pulled out a small silver cylinder. He uncoiled two wires hanging of one of its ends and opened a claw that was on the other end, exposing a red diamond. _Now this will prove what she really knows,_ he thought as he handed it to Aisha.

"What is it?" he asked.

She rapidly tapped her fingers against the table. "Well, it's carbonix-vaporizer, and it's used to minimize any electromagnetic-discharge within a plasma conductor." Aisha's face winced. "Is that right?"

"Well, that is correct," Billy said as he put the vaporizer in the drawer. "You know, you are an excellent intern. One day you may know more about this technology than I do."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Aisha said, "For instance, I don't know what _that_ is, do you?" She pointed at the object Billy just pulled from the drawer.

"Well, it is quite simple." He examined the golden disc in his hand. "It is a. . . a . . . It is a. . ." His mind went completely blank. No clue, he had no idea what he was holding in his hand or what it's function was.

"You don't know, do you?" she said.

"Well, I mean, I do not remember at this present moment, however—"

She smirked, giggled, then she laughed. She laughed at him with a twisted jaw and blackened eyes. Her began getting thinner and thinner. "You act like you're smart, but you don't know nothing!" Yellow puss gushed out of her mouth as she cackled away at him.

"No, no I swear!" he said. "I know how all this works. Everything has its purpose and I can explain it in detail For example, The Morphing Grid operates via a trans—" But, that was gone too. He could even remember how The Morphing Grid works, the basis for everything Zordon as ever taught him, gone. He couldn't remember anything, his mind was, the room was blank. There was nothing but him, nothing, noth—

Something grabbed his shoulder. He looked over to see Trini smiling down at him. "You are being silly," she said. "Tell me, what's two times two?"

He scrambled for thought. "Well, two times two is four, and four times four is sixteen, and sixteen times sixteen is two hundred and fifty six. . ." He smiled. It was all coming back to him. "Two hundred and fifty six times. . ."

 _Flash!_

* * *

Zack pushed his crutches into the kitchen, his arms aching with every step. Oh man, the cereal was on the top shelf. He leaned his on the kitchen counter, while holding one of his crutches up in the air to get the cabinet open.

He tried to hook the crutch onto the knob, but it slipped. He tried again; it slipped. The third time he was finally able hook it and swing the door open. He tried to push the crutch into the cabinet to grab the cheerios, the hand on the counter gave way. He slipped and fell onto the floor. The cheerios rained onto his face.

The rest of the day proved to not be as exciting. It was only exciting whenever Zack had to pull himself up and down the stairs whenever he needed to use the bathroom, his ankles feeling like they each had a safe weighing them down.

But the day was so boring that all he could muster was watching T.V, and even then, lifting up the television remote was a chore. This routine carried on for weeks as Zack continued to do nothing over, and over, and over again as his muscles refused to heal, but was it really weeks? Or was it hours? It all felt the same.

Zack flipped through the channels, until he found one of his favorite shows: _Turn it up with Andre Benson_. Andre had been one of Zack's heroes ever since he was six. Seeing that man dance was amazing, the way he flipped and gyrated was magical.

Andre, as he always did, started by talking to the camera. "Alright, today I'm gonna take a step back and let you show me what you got? Today i'm gonna stop teaching you and let you turn it up! Are you ready Zack?"

Zack's eyes widened. _He couldn't be talking to me, could he?_ he thought. Andre had to be, though. He was looking straight into Zack's eyes. Awestruck, Zack pointed at himself.

"Yeah, come on man, turn it up!" Andre said.

Zack got up from the couch. "Alright man, I'll teach you some hip-hop kedo!" He tried his spin kick, but his ankle couldn't handle the weight and he tumbled onto the floor. He tried to get up, but it was as if he was magnetized to the ground. He couldn't lift his arms up.

"Sorry man, it ain't for everybody," Andre said before he channel went to static.

"Andre, wait!"

The channel changed to a female reporter in a trench coat standing in front of a cloud of smoke. "Bob," she said, "I'm standing in front of what maybe the rangers most difficult battle yet. Just an hour ago—" The reporter was interrupted by the sound of a blaster fire. The rangers emerged from the smoke.

"We gotta fall back, there is too many of them," Jason said. From out of the smoke, a wave of putties washed over the rangers, dog piling on top of them, creating a mountain of putties seven miles high.

"No!" Zack tried to pull himself off of the floor. He closed his eyes and tried to lift his left arm, but it was like someone was standing on it.

"Get up you fool!" a voice said. Zack opened his eyes to see Billy standing over him, smiling at him.

"Billy, I can't," Zack said, tossing and wriggling, "I need your help."

"Figures," Billy said, "I've wasted year of my life helping you out because you were too stupid to get yourself out of your own problems. Why are you even one of us? You're not much better at fighting than me or Trini. You're certainly not very smart. Why are you here? Is it because you're such a good dancer? I guess not anymore."

The words cut through him because he knew they were true. The floor began to crack and he sank deeper, and deeper into the floor. "Billy, please help me up!" Zack pleaded.

"No, you're gonna pay for your uselessness," Billy said with a grin.

He couldn't get up, no matter how hard he tried. Each limb felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. The edges of the floor closed in on him, chomping on him. The floor was eating him. He closed his eyes and waited.

"Zack," a whispering voice said.

He looked over at the T.V. Trini was in there, in the static, waving at him. "It's not real," she said, "take a closer at him."

He looked back at Billy, squinting his eyes. Billy frowned as his face dissolved into a skull. _Bones!_ His memories came flooding back to him. He lifted himself up off the floor with everything he got.

Bones stretched out his jaw to let out a horrible screech.

 _Flash!_

* * *

Fifteenth time's the charm, Jason thought, as he attempted to whittle a whistle with his lucky pocket knife. At least, his uncle said it was lucky when he gave it to him as a secret gift for his birthday last year. His parents didn't like the idea of Jason playing with sharp objects, but he was thirteen now. He was old enough to handle anything.

Jason whittled away, trying to get the whistle that the scoutmaster showed him how to make. If he got this right, he would only be five merit badges away from completing his stash. Only five away more from finally seeing the pride on his parents faces he almost never sees. Only five more . . .

"Jason," Richie said, "can we head back now? I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry,"Jason said.

Richie adjusted his round glasses. "I'm serious, we got enough wood, dinner will be served soon, let's go."

"Yeah he's right," Twitch interrupted," Mr. Applegate isn't gonna like that we spent more than an hour by ourselves," Twitch scratched his face nervously, " we'll get in trouble again and can't after what happened to the raft. No no no. That be no good Jason."

"Alright, alright," Jason threw the wood he was whittling on top of the stack they made on the little red wagon. It was gonna take twenty minutes to just wheel the thing back to camp, so it would be best just to go now.

"Alright troop, let's mo-"

It came out from behind the rock and hissed it's large fangs at Jason.

"I'll eat your souuuuuullllllllll!" it screamed.

Jason tumbled to the ground, as Richie and Twitch grabbed each other for comfort. Jason stared into it's yellow cat eyes . . . it's obviously rubber eyes.

It laughed until it pulled off the rubber mask, revealing the familiar blonde, blue eyed jerkface.

"Connor!" Jason said from the ground.

"Hehe, you kids, really are as easily scared as you're stupid," Connor said.

Connor Clayton sucked. If you could grow as big in size as you were in jerkiness then Connor would be the tallest man on earth, and he seemed to like that idea. He relished being three years older and a foot and a half taller than everyone else.

"What do you want?" Jason asked, dusting dirt off of him.

"Just thought I'd check on your progress," Connor examined their wood pile.

"Pathetic," Connor said, "not nearly as impressive as ours.' Connor pointed his thumb behind him. Ten feet away, Jason could see Connors thugs piling on a stack of wood twice the size of theirs.

"You're just jealous, man!" Twitch said before hiding behind Richie's wide frame.

"Yeah, Jason has more merit badges than you do, right Jason," Richie said.

Thanks guys, Jason thought. Now instead of leaving, the caveman was gonna target Jason.

"Oh, I bet you think you're so great, huh?" Connor asked.

"I never said anything," Jason shook his hands in front him.

"Well, I bet there is one thing, you'll never do. The one merit badge, you'll never get," Connor said.

"What?" Jason said exhausted.

"Donny's cave," Connor said with a smile.

"What's that?" Twitch asked from behind Richie.

"Oh it's just a little tradition, done only by the bravest of Hawk-Scouts, and without any supervision." Connor said," In '32 a Hawk-Scout named Donny went on hike unsupervised, he went missing and after months of searching, nobody found him."

"Really?" Richie asked.

"Really. Ten years ago, a Hawk-Scout found a cave not too far from here. He ran back to his troop and claimed that he found Donny's body laying there. He even claimed that Donny opened his eyes and reached out to grab him, but when they checked the cave out nothing was there!"

"Huh," Jason looked over to see Richie and Twitch quaking in their hiking boots.

"Ever since then, It's been a tradition for the best and the bravest Hawk-Scouts to go out in the middle of the night and spend a couple of hours in the cave. Many have tried, but few stayed the whole time. I was thinking of doing it myself," Connor said.

"Well, good luck with that. I think we'll be on our way," Jason pulled the wagon forward.

"Oh, what's wrong Scott? Chicken?"

Jason stopped, "No, I just-"

"You know, I thought courage was one of the biggest parts of being a Hawk-Scout, but I guess you three will never know what that feels like. You'll just lay around like the losers you are," Connor said.

In that one sentence, all of the frustration Connor had caused over the past year flooded into Jason's face. That jerk didn't know how hard he had to work get where he was, it was time he showed him. Jason went up to Connor's face.

"Alright, count me in. In fact, count all of us in," Jason said with a smile.

"Yeah . . . wait, what?" Richie said.

"Alright, I'll see you boys at the edge of the lake, 9 o'clock, after lights out."

"Jason, I'm really not so sure ab-" Twitch started.

"We'll be there," Jason said.

"Good. Oh, and by the way . . ." Connor kicked the wagon. Wood fell spilled onto the dirt.

"You better clean the mess you made!" Connor yelled as he laughed away.

Jason looked on furiously. He'll get what's coming to him, he thought.

"What have you gotten us into?!" Twitch said, furiously scratching the back of his head.

"Look, it's just a dumb urban legend, it will be okay. If we do this, we might finally get him off our backs for good," Jason said.

"But what if we get caught? Leaving camp grounds at night is one of the worst offences possible," Richie said.

"We're not gonna get caught, and trust me, any punishment will be worth the look on Connor's face when we finally do something he can't do. Now let's just wrap this up and go home."

Jason and the others tried to put the wood back on the cart as quickly as they could. Ouch, Jason's thumb stung with pain when he picked a stick up. He looked at his thumb to see he had a tiny cut on thumb, trickling out a small bit of blood. It was a neat cut, too clean to because by a deep splinter. He must of cut himself with the pocket knife without even noticing.

Sneaking out of the cabin was the easy part, the camp didn't exactly have a state of the art security system, in fact, it was more of an honor system. At nine, Jason woke up Twitch and George and they set out into the night, keeping low in case of anybody was out late.

They walked by the pier, around to the side of the lake, where Connor waited. They hiked up the grassy hills and passed the trees was there incline went from horizontal to vertical.

Other than the occasional mocking from Connor, silence consumed the group. They had nothing to say that hadn't already been said. Richie just tried going through this stone faced, keeping his eyes on the ground. Twitch on the other hand, his body shook and trembled the whole hike. Jason tried his best put off the confidence that he knew Connor hated. It was hard though, with only the eerie silence and occasional chirp of crickets.

They had arrived, the mouth of the cave was wide and it looked almost like a dead shark in the moonlight, ready to swallow them whole.

"Alright," Connor said as he flipped on his lantern," let's go babies."

Jason followed behind Connor, but not before giving Twitch and Richie a push into the cave. The sound of their footsteps vibrated in the cave. Each step, spooking one of them.

"Jason, I'm not so sure about this," Twitch said.

Connor whipped around to face them, "Look, if you think you can bac-"

That's when Jason saw it, illuminated by the light, it's black eyes.

"Connor look out!"

Connor looked around to see It rise on two feet.

"Bear!" he screamed.

Connor was consumed by the it's lunge over him.

The next three minutes of Jason's life came to him as if it were only three seconds. It flashed before him, fragmented and incomplete. _Did I run away?_ he thought. _I couldn't have_ , Jason remembered that it was impossible to run away from a bear. Applegate told him it wasn't even worth trying. But he was there, hiding in bush far away from the cave.

He waited in the bush as it smelled over him. It stopped. He slowly got out of the bush, searching through the trees to see if it was still there. It wasn't on his left and it wasn't on his right.

The claw swiped by his face, he ducked out of the way.

The heavy lights made sweat pour down Jason's face. _Where am I?_ he thought. He squinted his eyes to see he was in some kind of auditorium. He peered down to see that his parents sitting in the front row, actually they were sitting in all the rows.

Applegate came by. He held out a badge with a large pin sticking out of it. "And the merit badge for the world's biggest coward goes Jason Lee Scott," Applegate said, his face decomposing.

"Why couldn't you just follow the rules!" Jason's dad yelled out.

"I— I tried," Jason muttered.

Applegate grabbed Jason's neck.

Jason looked at him, but he wasn't Applegate anymore. It was Connor holding the pin. He had red claw marks over his face.

"Loser."

"Wait!"

The pin morphed into the claw as it went closer to Jason's face. Then he was back. _That's right, i didn't leave_ , he thought. He stood there in the cave the whole time and watched it happen. The claw went for him again.

 _Slash!_

He saw Twitch lay on top of a fallen Richie.

 _Slash!_

He saw Billy lay on top of a fallen Kimberly.

 _Slash!_

Connor reached out for him.

 _Slash!_

Tommy reached out for him.

 _Slash!_

 _Slash!_

He fell out of the bush, he looked out in the distance to see it waiting for him. It was different now, no longer a normal bear, but a zombie-skeleton bear. It charged at him.

 _I guess this is it_.

Someone grabbed his arm, he looked behind him to see a girl, a few years older than him.

"Let's go," She said.

After looking into her eyes, it came flooding back to him. _Trini!_ He looked back at the zombie bear and remembered what to do. He plunged his pocket knife into its snout.

He grabbed her hand.

 _Flash!_

* * *

Kim stumbled through the void. Was it the Command Center? All light, even the Command Center's dim reflective light, was gone. There was nothing but darkness and the echo of Kim's heels hitting the metal floor.

She couldn't even be sure if she was even inside a building. For all she knew, the next step would have no floor beneath her, and she would fall forever into the tread carefully to make sure she would avoid that.

In the far distance she spot a light, illuminating a path before her. She ran toward it, maybe there was a way out of here. As she ran, shadowy figures below the light materialized with every step they became more and more defined and clear to the eye.

Within feet, she saw Billy and Zack sitting at an old fashioned, green, card table. Something normal that they did together.

"Do you have any twos?" Zack asked.

"Go fish."

"You're cheating, for sure," Zack said.

"What possible motivation could I have to cheat a child's game?" Billy said.

"Hey guys," Kim said, "mind if i play?"

As their heads turned from their cards, all color seemed to drain out of their face. They looked at with such repulsing disgust on their pale-grey faces.

"Let's get outta here," Zack slammed the cards on the table, "game night is ruined."

"Why are you so boring?" Billy said before walking away.

"Boring?" Kim saw them walk away from the light. "Wait, can you at least tell me the way out of here."

"She's not too bright either," Zack said.

Kim took a step forward, and in a flash, the light was out. She stumbled around a and took a few steps back to make up for the sudden darkness.

Bump!

The back of her head throbbed as she realized she hit something. She felt around with her hands. There was a metal wall behind her now. But she swore there was nothing behind her, nothing at all.

Very freaky, she thought. She continued forward, whatever was ahead was better than what would behind her. Emptiness laid before her, there was no telling where she was going or where she had been with every step she fear she might have been going in circle. She had to keep going though, for every time she stopped to take a breath she felt the wall behind her touch her back.

As soon as another light appeared, she ran for it, hearing the sound of the wall sliding behind her. The figure beneath this light shaped into Tommy. She quickly grabbed his arm to get his attention.

"Tommy, you have to help me. I'm trapped," she said.

"Yeah, and you're trapping me. Why are you always so needy?" he said.

"Please, I need your help."

Tommy pulled his arm away from her. His face grew pale and his eyes yellow as he stared her dead in her eyes.

"It's a good thing you're hot."

 _What? Why would-_

Before she could process what happened, the light flickered out and she was knocked onto her side by another wall. Her head spun, but she quickly shook it off when she realized she had two walls coming in at her. She crawled to the left hoping she would find the walls edge, but it seemed to go on forever. The other wall closing in behind her feet.

The light flashed right onto her face, when she opened her eyes she saw Trini walking casually past her on her phone. By instinct, she grabbed Trini by the ankles.

"Get off of me, you freak!" She screamed as she tried to Kim off.

"Please. We're best friends, remember? Don't leave me!" Kim said.

"Stop holding me back!" Trini said as she kicked Kim off of her.

Trini returned to her phone. "Yes, I would like to speak with the queen . . ."

Trini vanished and the light with it. Kim felt a third wall press against her head. The only way she could move was forward. She went back on her feet ran as she heard the wall closing in around her. She ran hoping that there was some kind of end to this madness.

The light was so bright it seemed to have a force that knocked her off her feet. She held her upper body off the floor to see that it was a white light, shaped in the form of a doorway. Another shadow popped out of it, a familiar shadow with black and silver hair and a mustache.

"Daddy?" she said.

"Yes," he said

"Daddy, please help me."

"No, you have been nuisance to me for ten years now. I could have been somebody, you know? Me and your mother were happy until you came along. That's why I left, I couldn't stand you. After we got divorced, I was finally free, but here we are again. You trying to suck the blood from like a tick, goodbye Kim," he said.

"Daddy, no," She said with tears in her eyes.

He went through the door of light and vanished. The door shrunk and Kim saw the wall coming it rest on sliding toward her. She stood up and looked around. All four walls were going to box her in.

Something tugged at her shoulder, she looked up to see Trini hanging on top the wall with an open hand and a smile. Kim grabbed her hand.

 _Flash!_

* * *

Trini got up from the floor to see the rangers around her. They all rubbed their temples as they struggled to their feet.

"We did it!" Kim yelled as she hugged Trini.

Zordon's smiling face materialized in the tube. "Rangers, I'm glad you're all okay."

"Well, not without some help from you know who." Tommy turned to Trini, "she's pretty clever isn't she?"

"Indeed, all of you children are so . . . stupid."Zordon's blue tube turned blood red, his face melting into a skull. He fired lasers from his eyes. The beams, zig-zagging around Trini until they hit all the rangers. The rangers exploded into ash.

From the ash cloud, Bones appeared. "Sorry little one, I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy for you. Now, are you going to fin—"

Trini ran out the front door, only to find that it lead to the edge of a cliff.

"How many times do I have to repeat myself?" Bones said.

* * *

The shock made Tommy jump onto his feet. His head darted around to see that the danger was gone, at least the immediate danger was gone. He saw them all there still laying in the circle they made on the floor. How were they gonna get out of this with Bones messing with their minds like this?

 _Beep! Beep! Beep!_

A mini-alarm from the command center console caught Tommy's attention. He ran up to the platform to see a red screen. It read in flashing letters: **Unusually high heat signature detected in sector C-473.** The skull! It must be there! With all the games Bones has been playing, it must be red hot by now.

Tommy looked back at his friends lying peacefully on the blue crystal floor. _Looks like it's up to me_ , he thought. His friends needed a hero to save the day, and what better hero could they have other than the great Tommy Oliver! A hero so triumphant, he was the only one to wake up from this nightmare!

"Isn't that right, Guardian?" Tommy said.

She smiled at him. "That's right, sir. Only someone as daring and amazing as you can save them," Guardian said. "I'd really hate to be Bones right about now."

"Couldn't have said it better myself."

Tommy ran down to Sector C-473 in the basement. The sector was an industrial nightmare of pipes that ran around the walls of corridors. Tommy searched through, occasionally lifting a leg over, or ducking his head under a pipe that ran from wall on the corridor to another.

With all the pipes strung about, each wall had a million little nooks and hollows in the spaces between pipes. A million perfect hiding spots for the skull. He scanned the area carefully looking up and down the sides of the walls.

"Ha!" Tommy spotted it lodged between two pipes way at the top of the wall, barely escaping the light. He grabbed it, but it was stuck in there more than hethought. He grabbed it both hands and wedged it out. Tommy turned it over to face its face. He smiled back at the skulls dead grin. It was a great victory for a truly great hero.

"Looks like you won the grand prize!" It said, laughing.

He dropped the skull. The floor shaked as bright red cracks spread throughout it. Tommy jumped to his left, but it was too late. The floor gave in under his feet and fell. His hands managing to hold on to the edge.

He looked down. Oh, why did he look down? A crevice stretched fifty feet down below him. A river of lava boiled at the bottom. Tommy's face sweated as he stared into its red-orangish glow.

"A great hero?!" Bones said. Tommy looked up to see a fully formed Bones, his imagine alternating between himself and Guardian.

He laughed again. "I swear White Ranger that you really are your own worst enemy. Why can't you just, pardon the phrase, wake up and realize you can't save them, you can't yourself, and you certainly can't save _him_."

Those last words briefly snapped Tommy's attention away from trying to retain a good grip. He looked up at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I am talking about, I'm talking about making a bed and refusing to sleep in it. I'm talking about breaking the universe and not expecting to pay a fine."

No, there was no way he could've known about what Tommy did in the pyramid all those months ago. Breaking the universe? He had to be bluffing. It's time to change the subject."Hey, aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Oh please, death in my case has always been relative. But In this case, I would like to thank you personally for opening that door for me," Bones said.

 _Gotta be a bluff, gotta be a bluff_ , Tommy thought as his fingers strained to hold onto the edge.

"It's like I keep telling you, actions have consequences," Bones said.

* * *

Trini's heart thumped in her chest as she ran, at this point she stopped paying attention to what was around her a focused on getting away. She couldn't take much more. She spotted a boulder and hid behind it to catch her breath.

She rubbed her hands together, trying to get her whole system to slow down. As the thudding in her chest slowed, she saw where she was now. Back in the pale-grey woods where Bones had accidently brought her before. Fields of tall, but dying, grass laid before her. She couldn't help but get up and explore.

The endless empty fields of grass were occasionally filled with one or two trees, each one withered and looking as if they were being starved. Their were branches dry and cracked, pointing to sky with sharp ends. Loads of empty space as their branches were empty with only the rare yellow leaf here and there.

 _What is this place?_ she thought. There something familiar about it, but she had no real clear memory of it, only a weird feeling in her chest. Everything else Bones created was based on something she remember clearly, but this was different.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye. The biggest of tree that stood, still starved, but tall. It almost called to her from the distance, she couldn't but take a step toward it, then another, then another.

It wasn't until she was mere inches away from the tree that she could see what it truly was. She covered in her mouth with both hands as she saw what was hanging with the tree's clutches.

It was her. Grey and lifeless she was, like a corpse. Dust and moss covered whatever parts of her body that were exposed, the rest hidden as it was woven into the branches and tree itself.

Truth crashed onto her head, the origin of her favorite work of art was a nightmare.

It opened its black eyes as it screeched at her, It's face rapidly rotting away. She tried to book it, but the the branches whooshed down and wrapped themselves around her torso and ankles. It pulled her in, slamming her into the tree. She struggled for freedom as its rib cage closed over like a bear trap.

Hanging on a long branch, its head swung around to meet Trini face to face as he was being crushed. Its face finally rotted away, revealing Bones' skull.

"Hello little one," he said

"This isn't real, It's just a dream, it's just a dream," She said as she tried to pull her arms away from herself.

"But that's the thing girl, it is real. Everything I show you is real in some form or another," he said, "You see, I thought was a goner. I could feel myself slip away as my head turn to ash. I faded until I was only a memory, but then something happened. A force, a hand reached out of the darkness and awakened me. I fed off of its energy and slowly my head came back, in your little command center. As I fed, i saw things that were beyond the simple illusions of mind. I saw the future. And that is what I showed you. That future was real."

"No." A branch wrapped around and squeezed her forehead."You're lying!"

"Lying?" he said "No. You're far more of a liar than I lie to yourself all the time. You lie when tell yourself you're going to get better as a ranger, you lie when you tell yourself you wouldn't rather be somewhere else than where you are now, and you lie when you tell yourself you're not a terrible person for wanting to go. You lied and lied until you were stuck, unable to do anything. But now, your gonna be stuck with me, forever."

* * *

Tommy gripped the edge with all that he had.

"Well, I don't have all day!" Bones crushed his boot against Tommy's fingers.

 _How do I get out of this one?_ he thought. _How could I beat someone who's in my own head?_ It hit him like lightning. _Use someone who is also in my head!_ Tommy closed his eyes and concentrated hard, trying to hone in on some bad memories.

"What are you doing you weakling?" Bones said.

"Tommy opened his eyes. "Me? Nothing."

A metal spear stabbed through Bones. He screamed, looked at it then turned around.

"You were always my least favorite creation," Lord Zedd said.

"Boss?" Bones said.

Zedd grabbed his skull. "It's time to rid myself your incompetence."

"Boss! No!"

Tommy watched as Zedd wrapped himself around Bones leaped off the edge. Both of them plunged into the lava below.

* * *

The branches went limp, allowing Trini to fall to the ground. She looked back and saw the tree set itself a blaze. Bones twitched and convulsed in agony as he burned. The flames rose higher, and became brighter, and brighter, until . . .

 _Flash!_

The Command Center was sideways. No, she realized she had been laying on her side. From this angle she saw a glowing red light under the stairs leading up to the platform. The realization of what it was, snapped Trini's groggy mind to attention. She grabbed the skull from under the stairs and threw onto the floor. She pulled out her blaster.

"It's your bedtime." She fired.

The skull exploded into ash and red fire.

* * *

Tommy vision came back into focus upon looking at the skull disintegrate five feet in front of him. He and the other rangers rose to their feet to meet Trini.

"Wow, that was . . . that was definitely something," Zack said, rubbing his neck.

Trini was still staring down the ash pile where Bones skull use to be. Tommy walked over and pushed the gun down, and waved his hand over her eyes to get her attention.

"It's alright," he said to her quietly.

"Is it?" Jason asked across from them, "How do we know for sure that this isn't just another nightmare?"

Tommy thought about it for a minute. _If this is a dream, then there should be some things I did before that I can't do now_ , he thought. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples as he walked toward the door that led to the Zord hanger bay. He opened his eyes turned to the other rangers.

"Lord Zedd is right behind that door," he said. Tommy pushed the button and the door slid away revealing nothing but darkness.

"I guess we are awake," he said, smiling.

 _Clap! Clap!_

Tommy heard that sound come slowly out from the dark corner of the Command Center. "Congratulations," Bones said as he stepped into the light, clapping his hands so hard that his right hand fell off.

The rangers huddled together.

"Relax, relax," he said as his hat fell apart,"you are all 'free' now, the monster is vanquished and the Power Ranger will live on to fight another day, as it's always been." Bones turned his head to the side and laughed a little bit, "You know, that really is a dumb name, you know that? Power? I mean really?"

Bones took a step toward them, leaving behind his right leg. "Sure, you have the fancy coins, and the gadgets, and the giant robot, and you live in the hi-tech castle in the mountains far above everybody else. But at the end of the day, you six are no different than any other of the disgusting insects that infest this planet. This world, the things that scurry around in it, disgust me. It's sickening the way they just move about their existence, thinking they have power, thinking that just because they have free will, that makes them free."

"Can you get to the point?" Tommy said.

The trench coat dissolved off his body, revealing his crackling skeleton. He raised his left arm,only for it to disintegrate. He raised his right arm instead. "The point?" Bones said,"The point is that it doesn't matter that you escaped your dreams, because you are all still part of _its dream_."

"What do you mean?" Jason asked.

Bones jaw fell off and a ring of red fire formed on his forehead. A dot in the ring made it made appear as a third eye. He spoke without his jaw, but it wasn't his voice. It sounded much older, much deeper.

" _The dream is over, the one with the real power is awake."_

Bones' remaining leg caved in and he finally disintegrated into ash and dust.

* * *

Tommy and the others gathered around Zordon's tube, Trini had decided to go home and get some actual rest from the experience.

"Well rangers, it seems we've learned some new things," Jason said

"Do you really think Trini doesn't want to be with us anymore?" Zack asked.

"I don't know, but It's safe to say she needs some kind of break from it all," Jason said.

"But what about what Bones said? About the future and all that?" Tommy asked.

Jason scratched his head. "I don't know, with Bones it's hard to tell what's real and what was just him trying to scare us."

"If I may interject," Billy said, "even if she wanted to leave the team for good, does it really matter? We have to understand, it was going to be very unlikely that all six of us were going to stay on the team the whole time. We do not have contracts, and we do not know when our job is going to end anyway."

"What do you think, Zordon?" Jason asked.

Zordon had just watched silently whole time, he always wanted to know what everyone thought on something before he spoke.

"Billy is correct," Zordon said, "Everyday we create more and more enemies, and I never expected all of you dedicate your lives to a battle that will never end, like I tried. Above all, we must let her make the decision if the time were to come. We shall not try to control the actions of others, that makes no different than the monsters. Sometimes people must make decisions for only them . . . and they have nothing to do with us."

Kim stood up and slumped away.

"Where are you going?" Tommy said.

"Home," she said.

* * *

Kim violently rubbed her hands over her steering wheel as the words from her dad repeated over and over again. _I could have been somebody, you know? You trying to suck the blood from me like a tick._ Her father's words turned into someone else's: _Stop holding me back!_

The words themselves seemed to violently attack Kim's face, the words stung her until her face was wet with tears.


	5. See You Later

She was alone in a crowded restaurant. Kim cradled her head in her arm while she scrolled through her contacts, flicking her finger up and down on the screen. What was the point? School was winding down and everyone would be way too busy to hang. The other rangers would probably be extremely too; not that she really wanted to see any of them right now anyway. She reached the name at bottom of her contacts, Trini. Her finger hovered over the name.

 _Stop holding me back!_

The day was a bust, time to go home. Leaving Ernie a generous tip for her smoothie, she headed to her Jetta. While backing out of the parking lot, she heard whatever song was playing on the radio fade out. The news came on.

"New evidence gathered about the recent attempted assault on Kelsey Carpenter," the announcer said, "has confirmed authorities suspicions that the infamous _Ghost of Los Angeles_ has been operating in Angel Grove for an estimated four months. Last Year, the unknown suspect had a committed a series of violent assaults in the Los Angeles area. No connections between the victims had been made, only that they were attacked without any signs of breaking and entering into the home. A—"

She shut the radio off and quickly checked her rearview mirror. _God, I hate the news,_ she thought, _Why does it always have to be so depressing? It's always trying to rile up your. . ._

A black van was close behind her, weirdly close. Nothing, it was probably nothing. Still, her foot put a little pressure on the gas pedal, and she gave herself a little space between them. Her eyes focused back on the road in front of her, wouldn't want to cause an accident after all. But like magnet, her eyes pulled back to the mirror. The black mass grew larger and larger in the mirror. Why was he— Oh, the stop light! Kim came to a halt. Yeah, of course. The dude probably just wanted to be the yellow light is all, oh well. Kim clicked on her left turn signal.

So did he.

Wringing her hands on the wheel, she slowly turned over at the green light, eye locked behind her. The van shadowed her movement exactly and trailed behind her down the road.

Her heart raced as the van followed her through a right turn. _This is it. He's after me._ She grinded her teeth together as she made another left. _Still there._ Her eyes flickered from the back to the front as she cruised down the road. _Still there._ Reaching down for her morpher, her fingers trembled.

She raced down the lane to the light. It flashed red before she could make it, and she brought herself to a stop. The thudding in her chest was almost audible as she saw the van shift over to the lane next to her.

Sliding her thumb over the morpher, she waited as the van slowed to a complete stop. She shifted her eyes over to it.

 _Black Spittle,_ was scrawled on the side of the van in bright red letters. _Oh come on. . ._

Kyle from keyboard class popped his head out of the van window. Of course, it was him and his awful band. He pulled his greasy hair to the side. "Hey babe—"

"No!" she yelled at him the way she had five times before.

"Alright, alright. I get it." Kyle's van turned onto the left lane and went out of her sight.

She slammed her head onto the steering wheel. Of course it was only Kyle. The weirdo had been trying to get her to go to his little non-show for an eternity now. _Did I just forget what his van looked like?_ She lifted her head up, glancing down at her radio. _God, I hate the news._

* * *

The gates of the _Angel Cove Community_ opened before her. Driving past the neat rows of white houses that lined the road, waving at old Mr. Nelson as he watered his green lawn, and smirking at couple of kids playing with a water sprinkler, she headed to Fern Hill.

Something caught her eye and she stopped. A worker locked the gate to the old community pool. _Wow!_ She must of past the millions of times on the way to her house, but this was the first time she noticed it awhile. She used to a have a lot of fun there, back in the day.

"Hey! Check this out!" she used to say before cartwheeling across the wet concrete. Her dad would laugh and her mom would clap at her amazing gymnastic feat.

Carly would pull down her sunglasses and shake her head in excitement, throwing her blonde hair into the air. "Wow, Kim! That was like, so incredible. So Jealous."

 _Carly, I haven't thought about her in years._ She used to babysit Kim while her folks were at their jobs, but she did way more than that. She taught her how to be, "Fun and fashionable at the same time," as she used to say. She came to all of the family's pool parties.

One time, Carly convinced Kim's dad to try dancing with them. Within a second, he ended up face first in the pool. They all laughed and he seemed like he was ready to go at it again, but he got a call, he got busy.

Kim's mom got busy too. They both became too busy to dance with her, and each with other. So, it was just her and Carly for a little while, but Carly had to leave eventually, and there wasn't a point to going back to the pool after that.

 _I'm wasting my gas,_ she thought. She continued her drive up Fern Hill. At the top of the hill, she parked in front of her large white house. A man in overalls approached her Jetta. As she rolled down her window, she remember the guy's name, Jesse. He was friend of her dad that was hired to finish his wine cellar.

"Hey, we're almost done, want to check it out?" Jesse asked.

"Sure."

They walked down outside entrance into the large wooden room was occupied with guys putting bottles onto shelves and organizing barrels, some lifted the barrels into the wall and punctured taps into them.

She wandered through the cellar. It was weird finally seeing the thing complete. Her dad had been working it since they first moved in. Many times as a kid, she tried to get his attention while he was busy designing the room. He'd swore he'd get it done, but he also said that certain things just kept piling up for him.

Kim's shoulder knocked over a shelf. She tried to grab it, but a force on the other side stopped its fall.

A guy came around the other side of the shelf. He glared at her, staring her down with these dead looking eyes. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said with a cold inflection in his voice.

"Oh, sorry! Clumsy, I guess," she said.

"Do you think this is a joke, you could've destroyed this shelf and the one behind it," the man said without a change of tone in his voice, without emotion.

She shifted her eyes around the room. She didn't want to look at this guy's eyes. "I didn't mean to. . ."

"Oh, and how great it would have been for you to sit and watch me spend another two months rebuilding these, while you sit and watch from your little tower and laugh," he said.

Kim backed away slowly, he crept toward her. He just kept staring at her. No. He stared straight through her, like he was looking at nothing at all.

"Pipe down, bro," Jesse said as he walked in between the two of them. He placed a hand on his shoulder. "Look man, it was just an accident. She has no reason to bother you, so let's just go home."

He continued to stare off into space before answering.

"Alright," he said.

"Good." Jesse turned his attention to the group of workers. "Alright boys, pack it up. Only one more day after this." The guys released a collective groan.

The weird guy made his way to the door, stopping next to her for moment. He turned his head over to say something, not an apology, but something that stabbed deep into Kim's core even more than his eyes did.

" _See you later_."

She took a slow breath as he and the others left her in the cellar.

* * *

Kim pulled her last pink top from the drier when her phone buzzed. Mom must have finally explained why she wasn't home yet. The text read: _Trouble at office. Won't be home til later._

She sighed. A long and boring day was going to go on way longer. She was stuck home alone and now she wouldn't even be given the satisfaction of hearing her mother drone on about funny things that happened at her office. But of course, at the same time she knew this would be typical of her mother after her real estate business took off. All she could do was glance at the phone.

 _What was that?_

In the corner of her eye, she swore she saw something move in the trees outside the window. A black mass whooshing from one tree to another. Leaning into laundry room side door, she peered through it's window. Nothing there but a collection of trees with branches rattling in the wind. She turned back to the laundry basket.

 _There it is._

Her head snapped back to the window, something had to have moved out there. Was that weird guy coming for some payback? Nah. That's just dumb. It was probably a cat or something. Kim smiled at herself. She dedicated her life to fighting monsters and a cat in the woods, or a guy with an attitude problem got her scared, dumb.

Still, she locked the outside door before grabbing the laundry basket.

Television didn't even give her a useful waste of time. As the sun went down into the night, she surfed from channel to channel, from bad sitcom to bad commercial. She surfed until an image of police man made her pause. It was a news interview, and the banner at the bottom read: _Ghost of Los Angeles_ in Angel Grove?

"He would have to been collecting information on his victims for weeks, maybe months" the officer said, "He knew everything about them, where they lived, where they worked, where they liked to hang out, even how to get into contact wi—"

 _Done with this._

Kim shut the T.V off. She squirmed a little in her seat. _God, when is she gonna get back home? I'm so. . . bored. I can't stand this. How much longer—_

Her phone buzzed. _Finally!_ She went to type the usual 'K' she sends to her mom when she's on her way home, but it wasn't from her mom. It was a random number. The text read: _Hello Kim, I've been waiting for this._

She swallowed a gulp of air. What this some kind of joke or something? Because this wasn't funny. Before she could even formulate a response, the number sent another message.

 _See you later._

The lights went out.

In an instant the house was consumed in darkness, only illuminated by the pale moonlight. The T.V was out, and not even digital clock was lit in the place. As she tried to get to her cellphone's flashlight, she noticed that her phoned read: No Service.

Alright, there was no reason to freak out. It could all be apart of just some horrible coincidence. All she had to do was wait for the power to come back on. She tapped her fingers on her thighs and looked around the room, as if it would happen now.

 _Wait? Why wait, when I have this,_ Kim thought as she held her communicator to her face. _I can just hang out in the Command Center until this blows over,_ she thought. She pressed the direct line to the Command Center. Nothing. Which also meant no teleporting. She was stuck here for the night.

Getting to her feet, she tried to pace the nerves away; she paced over to the window, and stopped. _What was that?_ A black car was parked on the grass, and it wasn't her mom's. _When did that get here?_

Peering to through the window, she wanted to get a good look at it. A shadow moved around in the front seat of the car. It could be anything. Her heart fastened as images of a man, or a monster, or something breaking down the door and chasing after her flooded her brain. This wasn't a coincidence. Right now, this was real.

She ran up the stairs to her room. The front door was locked, nothing to worry about there, but just in case. She pulled out her old toy box from under her bed and clicked it open. From there she unfolded Annabelle, the bow she got for herself after she became a ranger. She searched through her quiver, she had about twenty carbon arrows, and one special one, a Pink Ranger taser arrow from Zordon in case of an emergency. She only had the one. It needed to be saved.

Running back down the stairs, she crouched down by the side of the stairwell and loaded an arrow into Annabelle. Steadying her shot, she held the bow in front of the door. She was only ten feet away. Nothing was gonna get past her.

She stood there, bow stretched out, keeping her eye through the sight. The picture became clear in her mind: a hand smashing through the glass of the door and her launching the arrow into it. The hand would reel back, and she would run up to the hole in the door and stare into its eyes before releasing another arrow. That oughta send the message.

But nothing happened, no smashing, no yelling, no shattering, no blood, nothing at all, not even the faint sound of footsteps. She stayed still. There was no way she was going to let her guard down. But the nothingness continued. There was no real threat to speak of, only the silent stillness that made up the air. Now that was killing her. Every second numbed her senses, and she snapped her wandering mind back to this moment, keeping herself from being lulled. Otherwise . . .

 _Knock-Knock._

She pulled the arrow back farther and waited for the glass to shatter, but no. Seconds later, the only sound heard was two quick knocks. Her peeled eyes widened a little bit.

"Is anyone there? I can use your help," a muffled voice said from behind the door.

 _He seems to be a very courteous intruder_ , she thought.

She placed her arrow back in the quiver and laid Annabelle on the stairwell. She carefully made her way to the door. She closed her eyes and took a brief breath before standing on her toes to see who it was. _Oh no_ , she thought.

"Hello," the creep said.

Of all the people, why did it have to be the creepy guy? "What do you want?" she said with some exhaustion.

"I think I left my cell phone in the cellar," he said in his cold voice.

Kim rubbed her palm against her face. "I think there's something wrong with the cell towers. I can't even get mine to work." She peeked back over the window. Maybe that'll get him to just leave?

"I don't use it to make calls anyway," he said. Weirdly, he didn't even look at the window they talked through. He just kinda stared at the space around it.

 _Doh!_ She knew that was long shot to be sure, but it was worth trying anything to get him to go away. Her eyes darted around the house as if somewhere written on the walls were the magic words to get him to disappear.

"Can you please just let me take a look around down there, so I can leave," he said.

Kim placed her hands on the door, tapping her fingers as she stared at the door knob. _Come on Kim,_ she thought, _you've blown up monsters bigger and more horrifying than this guy. Why are you gonna let this jerk scare ya._

 _Because I'm alone now._

 _No. I'm not gonna let this guy, or anything else stop me from doing what's right._ "Alright," she said. Kim unlocked the door and opened it.

"Thank you," he said with a weird, dull, half smile on his face.

* * *

She followed behind him on the creaking steps down to the cellar, her phone and the moonlight being the only illumination.

"Your parents should really invest in a gun, a bow and arrow is a poor choice for a self defence weapon," he said.

Kim's mouth said: "Hmm." But her mind said: _It's like you're asking me to shoot you and lock you down here._ She searched through the floor space in between the shelves, while he lifted and looked underneath barrels to find the phone.

Ten minutes later, Kim left the shelves and spotted the phone laying in the open inches behind his foot. While he was still occupied by the barrels. Kim picked up the phone.

She stared at her dark reflection in the touchscreen, and a terrible thought came into her head, terrible because it wasn't actually terrible if you thought about it. It was an instinctual urge that she couldn't ignore. She had to know for sure. _There's no reason not to._

She lit the phone up as Rob continued examining the barrels. No lock, nothing to stop her. She swiped pass the home screen.

"Find anything yet?" he said crouching among the barrels.

"No. Nothing," Kim pressed the messaging app. And there it was. The most recent text sent out by this phone before cellphone reception went out, a message to her number reading: _See you later._

The phone clattered on the hardwood floor. He turned toward her, "What do you think you're doing?" he said, swiping the phone.

She reached back into her quiver and pulled out an arrow and held it in front of her like a knife. "Stay away from me," she said.

"What's wrong with you?" he said walking toward her, undisturbed by the arrow.

She jabbed it at him.

He took a step back.

"I know who are," she said, "I've seen those little messages you left me."

He looked at his phone, then back at her with no sign of worry on his face, just blank apathy."You really are that stupid, aren't you? I just got here. Anyone could've done this," he said.

"Or you kept it in your sock or something the whole time, and it fell out without you noticing," she said. "I'm not taking anymore chances."

His blank face morphed into tired irritation. "Look, I'm going to leave this house. Don't stop me."He took a step forward.

She stepped back while holding the arrow out farther.

He took another step further.

Kim's left hand reached for her morpher. "Stop!"

"No."

The room grabbed him. The darkness itself wrapped an arm his neck while another pull out a glinting a blade and stabbed him in the shoulder. He screamed as the figure ripped the blade out of his shoulder and threw him head first into a barrel.

Kim's eyes shot open as her hand flipped the switch on her morpher. The casing around the power only opened enough to let a few sparks fly out.

The shadowy figure slowly turned to face her, revealing a white face mask hidden under a black hoodie. Her eyes darted up and down as her hand kept switching the morpher on. All that came out were some sparks, like a failing lighter.

It stepped toward her. Thinking quickly, Kim grabbed a bottle off the shelf next to her and threw it at him. He recoiled some as the glass smashed over the arm guarding his face. She grabbed another and threw it, then another. It stumbled backwards into the barrels.

She was beneath him now. He grabbed her shoulder to flip her on her back. She tried to crawl away as he tugged at her, until she remembered what she was still holding. She flipped over and jab the arrow right into the side of the white mask. He recoiled back, allowing her to kick him in shins and sending him tumbling down the stairs.

Stumbling back to her feet, she headed for the door, locking it behind her. Her chest heaved as she stepped away. Her ankle felt warm and wet. Looking down, she saw that it was slowly leaking blood.

 _Crack!_

The door nearly jumped away from the hinges as he crashed against, then again a second time. No time to think. She bolted.

She tried to ignore the pain as she ran through the archway and up the stairs to her room. There was a thud noise behind her; he must have hopped over the stair rail to get her. A sharp pain stabbed through her scalp as he tugged on her long brown hair. She gripped on the rail to try pull herself up.

Her fingers gave way, and she fell back so fast to push him off his feet. They tumbled downward. Kim's hand grabbed the rail again, making her land sideways on her ankle. Her teeth grinded together as she awkwardly got to her feet and hobbled to the the top of the stairs.

She heard him stomp up the stairs as she turned the corner and hopped into her room, locking the door. _What now?_ The door wasn't gonna last long. Her head turned from corner to corner of the room, hiding in the closest wasn't a good idea, neither was under the bed. Hiding was a bad idea. She needed to get out.

 _Got it!_

Crawling on top of her desk, she got to her window. She threw herself onto the roof and shut the window just as he broke in.

She laid there, her back lying on the sharp roof shingles, her head bruised from the hair pulling, and her foot leaking blood. Maybe it would be a good idea to stay here for the rest of the night, maybe for the rest of her life.

 _But that dude is still in the basement, probably losing consciousness right now. Mr. Ghost isn't going to leave either._ She took a breath. _This is my house, and I have a job to do._

Kim crawled out to an open area of the roof. She carefully sat up and rubbed her hand over her neck. Her eyes scanned the roof; there had to be something she could use to distract this guy. And there it was, a rock.

She picked up the flat stone and crawled her way to over the backyard. Her dad once had an accident cooking outside. The crash spooked her from all the way in her room. She hang her torso over the ledge and aimed for her dad's grill. She moved the rock back and forth in her hand to get her aim just right. She flung it. The grill fell off it's stand with a metal clang.

Crawling back to her bedroom window, she peeked inside. Nothing, just the busted door laying on the floor and some tossed bedding. Mr. Ghost must have fallen for the trap. She crawled back into her room.

 _He's just hiding in the hallway! He's gonna jump back in the room!_

No, just Kim's mind playing tricks on her, but she had to act fast. He would be back soon and she needed a way to take him down quickly. She still had Annabelle lying by the stairwell, but that wasn't enough. She needed something else.

Going through her drawer, she found some duct tape and wrapped around her ankle. _Better check the closet. There might be something in there._ As soon as she opened the closet door, something glinted in the moonlight. Kim bent down to find her old mini traveling T.V from back in their family's roadtripping days, an old school black box with a built in VCR. It was just as heavy as she remembered. She stared at her reflection on the gray screen.

 _Now this could be useful_.

* * *

She put her phone on the bottom of the stairs and press the bright red play button on the voice memos app, then ran to the kitchen archway and readied an arrow into Annabelle.

"Over here!" Kim's voice yelled through the speaker of her phone, the phrase repeating over and over again.

Kim aimed at the top of the stairs and waited. The silence returned as even the sound of her own voice on the faded from her ears. She zoomed in on the top of the stairs, nothing else existed. Right now, the only thing mattered was him showing up.

The wooden floors on the top floor creaked as he made his way from the back to the stairwell. She tried not let the noise break her tunnel vision. He would be there any second, just had to wait for it.

Time slowed down for her as the edge of his mass appeared from behind the wall. Now? No. It was best to wait long enough so that a shot would definitely hit him. His left side came into view, and she could see the outline of his white mask. The mask turned to face her as he took his first step.

 _Now._

The arrow was released and it flew into his shoulder. He grabbed his shoulder as crouched onto the top steps. In a flash, Kim loaded another arrow and ran to the front of the stairs. She released it into his leg as he tried to stand up. He stumbled the down the stairs.

She dropped Annabelle and ran back to grab the T.V behind her. She kicked his knife away, before raising the T.V over her head. For a split second, she saw his seemingly black eyes gaze up at her before the T.V screen smashed into his head.

His head dropped limply on the floor as the T.V spewed a few sparks. She took a few short breaths as his hand twitched. Just a reflex, he was out. Now it was time to go.

She hopped on her good foot down the cellar stairs to get to the dude and checked his pulse. Still alive, but he needed to get to a hospital soon. There was still no service on her phone. She had to take him herself.

"Please. . . Zane. . . Don't. . ." the dude muttered under his breath. At least he was somewhat conscious.

Grabbing him from under his arms and dragging him up the leading to the outside entrance, she brought him to her Jetta. He muttered more and more to himself as she dragged him.

"Momma," he said.

His mutterings seemed to have actual emotion in them, sadness. He was a weird mystery, a heavy mystery too. Kim managed to throw him into the back seat with Annabelle. She ran back around to the driver side and put her hand on the door handle.

 _The keys are back in the kitchen. . ._

She took a deep breath and ran back into the house. She was gonna get this over with as soon as possible. Bursting through the front door, without even looking at him, she scanned the kitchen island for her keys and grabbed them. She headed straight for the door, then stopped. Gone, he was gone. All that was on the floor was the shards from the smashed television. She booked it.

She jumped behind the wheel and backed up. When she returned her gaze to the front windshield, he stood there. She sent the car full speed forward and he was sucked under the car. It bounced up and down, each bounc followed by a c _rack!_ She brought the car to a halt. In the rearview mirror, she saw nothing but the empty field of plain grass before her.

A flood of glass shards came over Kim as a fist punched the window. She kicked the car into high gear as she spun it around in circles for a few seconds before heading forward. He tried to crawl into the car, reaching his hand out within inches of her face. She swerved.

The side of the car smashed into a tree, the airbag consuming her face. She leaned her head back and rubbed her temple as her vision returned from a blurred state. From the right side window, she saw him slowly try to get up from three feet away. She checked the backseat. The dude began to rub his hand over his temple, his eyes fluttered. She realized there was only one last thing she could do for him.

 _I've been waiting for this,_ she remembered. _He doesn't want him._ Kim threw the keys over to the dude, grabbed Annabelle, and ran out of the car.

* * *

Each step put a painful pressure on her ankle. Her chest felt compact and was tightening in on itself. Her face poured sweat in the humid air. She pushed her legs as for as they could take her.

As bad of an idea as it was, she couldn't help but take a turn her head to see him keep up with her. He walked as if were just a normal stroll through the park, no extra energy was exerted in his chase. He just casually pushed one leg over the other with his arms dangling limp from his body. And yet, with each glance Kim made she could see him just a little closer to her.

Wrong foot. She stomped to hard on her bad ankle and had to fall over to the ground, rolling down the hill.

Her hand cleared the hair out of her eyes and before her she saw a thick brush of trees and bushes. She pushed herself off the ground and hopped forward. She didn't want to look back now, because she swore she heard the lite crushing of grass beneath his feet.

She hopped and skipped until she swore she ahead of him. She dropped down into the bushes and loaded Annabelle while trying to lie beneath the branches.

He came into view, about a fifteen feet ahead of her. He came to a stop and stood there, staring off into space. He turned his head to the left, then to the right. He slowly turned his back to a stop straight ahead of him. He was looking at her. From fifteen feet away and through the thick brush, he was staring right into her eyes. He walked forward.

Kim's hands trembled as she aimed for a shot right in the center of his chest. She flung the arrow. He casually stepped to the side and the arrow landed softly on the ground. _What the hell is this guy?!_

Kim nervously loaded another arrow as he approached an uncomfortable five feet. He was almost standing over her when Kim fired point blank in the chest. This flung him back far enough for Kim to get back up and run.

She hopped ahead of him for what seemed like another ten feet, though Kim knew it had to be shorter than that. Her ankle felt like there was a thousand pound weight on it, and her thigh muscles burned with exhaustion. Once again she felt his presence was gone again, she stop behind a tree. She needed to stop.

She leaned against the tree, trying to breath the pain away. She grabbed a tree branch tight in her hand leaned over to see what was behind her.

Nothing. The trees and bushes were undisturbed. The only evidence that remained of him was the bloody arrow on the ground. She peeled her eyes; this couldn't be it. He had to be around there somewhere. She turned back to see if the view was better on the other side of the tree.

The masked breathed on her as he plucked and ripped out Annabelle's string like it was a feather. Kim screamed as she stabbed Annabelle into the hole in his chest, knocking him over.

Hope laid ahead as she saw the short wall surrounding the community pool with the dumpster laying close by. This gave Kim just enough extra hope to run a little faster. Almost crashing and falling into the dumpster. She pushed the lid down and crawled on top of it to get to the other side of the wall. Given the bad shape of her feet, she fell onto the concrete on her side. Her head became dizzy.

* * *

"Please don't g—" Kim fell onto the hardwood floor, flinging the high heels off her feet and onto the ground.

Carly came into the room, waving her suitcase. Both her case and her jaw dropped when she saw Kim. "What are doing with my shoes?" she said, picking them off the floor.

Kim ran her fingers through her pink feather boa."Thought we could play dress up again." Her lip quivered.

Carly sighed and unwrapped the boa around her. "Like, sorry Kim, but I have to go. I don't really have time to babysit anymore."

"Kim banged her little fists on the floor. "But. . . But. . ."

"And you don't need me anymore," Carly said.

"But. . ."

"Listen girl, you are totally amazing all by don't need someone to watch over you anymore. You know everything you need to know to survive in this world, how to be cool, and fun, and fashionable. I'd only be holding be you back." Carly smiled.

* * *

Her hand pulled the pink arrow from the quiver. Glancing over, she saw the blue sheen reflecting off the pool. _Yeah, the pool._ _Fry him in the pool._ She dragged herself into the freezing water, all the way to the center of the pool. One way or another, this was going to be it.

He jumped feet first over the wall, and tilted his head in confusion.

"Come on, you want me?" she said. "Come in here and get me."

He walk around the edge of the pool.

"What are you staring at? Get it over with!"

He walked over to the pool steps.

"You think I'm afraid of you? Just some guy?"

He looked over to his left and saw the pool shed and walked over to it.

"What are you doing? I'm over here! Hey!"

He busted into the shed and came out with a huge net. He threw it at her before she could avoid it. She dropped the arrow. He jumped into the pool and swam after her while she tried to get the net off of her head.

He wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her under, but she kicked him off and grabbed the arrow. She broke out of the pool and coughed the water out of her lungs while he struggled to get out of the net. He sank beneath the surface. She crawled to the edge of the pool.

The white mask ascended out of the water. He reached for her. Kim leaned inand stabbed him in the neck. He twitched and convulsed, and smoke billowed from his body as he fried. Kim stood up, dazed and amazed.

Something gripped her shoulder. She screamed.

"Relax," the dude said, rubbing his shoulder.

"Oh thank god you're okay," she said.

"Yeah, reception just came on. Police should be here any minute."

And so they did. The community pool became flooded with the sounds of sirens and the flashes of red and blue lights. Kim stood over the dudeas paramedics patched over his wound.

"Hey, uh, thanks for trying to help me," he said.

"Of course. Sorry for not trusting you," she said.

"To be honest, I don't really blame you that much," he said.

"Well I guess, my dad is gonna need you back to help fix the cellar again. I look forward to seeing you again. . . Oh! What's your name?"

"Rocky," he said.

"See you later, Rocky."

Kim walked away, only to bump into an out of breath Tommy. "Kim!" Tommy wheezed, "Sorry, there was this comet. . . and it messed with our stuff. . . the others are on their way, and. . ."

"It's alright," she said. In the corner of her eye, she saw both of her parents rushing toward they clung onto her, squeezing her tighter than ever before. They were here with her. They were real.

"We're so worried about you," her mom said.

"You'll never be left alone again, I promise," her father said.

She looked between them. Only feet away, all the rangers stood there. Trini waved at her. She waved back. She was so happy to able to wave back. Kimberly looked into her dad's eyes.

"Never was," she said.


	6. 30 Minutes or Less

_The Radioactive Ninja was here to save the day! He smashed through the window of the abandoned warehouse, and kicked the crooks in the face. Two more came at him, aiming their pistols at him. But with his magical radiation rays, The Radioactive Ninja was easily able to melt their guns. With two more high powered ninja kicks, and one kung fu grip, the crooks were down._

 _With one slash of his radioactive katana, he cut Sarah Sable free from the rope. Sarah smiled at the Radioactive Ninja, and said: "Oh, how could I possibly thank you, Mr. Ninja?"_

" _Oh, I'm sure we can think of something," The Radioactive Ninja said, pulling her closer to him. He pulled the radioactive mask away from his radioactive face._

 _Sarah pursed her lips. He leaned closer to her. . ._

"Park! Get up moron!" Mr. Kali shouted.

Adam, who unfortunately was neither radioactive, nor a ninja, shot up from the counter. The plain empty interior of Kali's Pizza snapped back into existence. "Would you like to hear today's specials?" Adam spat out.

"Park, pay attention!" Mr. Kali said, slamming the pizza box on the counter. "You got thirty minutes, go!"

Adam speedied his way all the way to the other side of town, late of course, but at least he got there. He practiced the words in his head as he made his way to the house. Maybe this time Mr. Kali's little customer spiel will work out. He knocked on the door

A fat balding man with round glasses answered the door with a look of utter disdain in his eyes, but Adam still had to do his bit.

"Hey brah," Adam yelled, "thanks for ordering Kali's Pizza, brah! The only pizzeria In Angel Grove that can deliver in a radical time at radical. . ."

The customers eyes drilled into Adam's soul. Time to get out with some dignity. "Yeah, sorry for the wait, dude. Here's your pizza," Adam handed him the pizza, and the man paid him by slamming the door in his face, which was his usual payment for not giving the pizza to the customer in less than thirty minutes.

 _Not even a tip? The last guy at least gave me a quarter for my trouble_ , Adam thought as he walked back to his car. At least the day was over. Another day, another doll—

His eyes were blinded by the bright green light, and the strong wind pushed him back onto the lawn. When he opened his eyes, there was a tank-sized lion with six feet and bat wings trampling over his car. It's paws smashed the roof, collapsing it. The windows burst. The thing then prowled off onto the streets of Angel Grove.

Adam's hands trembled they hovered over the remains of his car. His faced twitched. The only words that came of his mouth were: "Ah….ah...ah." He balled his hands into fists and threw his cap into the air.

"Not again!"

* * *

A month and seven orange sodas later, Adam was sitting in one of Kali's booths, dozing off. He rested his head against the cold table, waiting for another exciting adventure of The Radioactive Ninja to begin. His hand reached for his eighth bottle of orange soda. He put it close to his lips. _Wait, that's wood cleaner._ He forgot that he was actually supposed to be cleaning the table right now.

Kali approached the messy table with a red face. His eyes glared down at Adam. _Glare-ier than usual._ "Park, I need to see you in my office right away."

The office was not too different from Kali himself, large, beige, and bland. The only real decorations in the room were the framed photos, which were not as cool as Kali's bushy brows and mustache. Adam envied that stache.

"Park, you one of the laziest, most inefficient, most incompetent people I have had the displeasure of working with. Do you know why I haven't fired you yet?"

Adam grinned his teeth, "Because of my charming personality?"

"No, your personality is a microcosm of everything with this country today," Kali said. Adam dropped his grin.

"This is why." Kali pointed at an old black and white photo framed on the back wall. Kali and Adam's dad were posing next to this huge bass in front of some old dock. "Your father and I have broken fingers together on that boat," Kali said, "So, when he asked me to give his little boy a hand, how could I say no?"

Adam tried to grin again. "And I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to—"

"Burn my money?!" Kali shouted. "Consistently, four out of ten deliveries from you are late. I'm running a business here, you know?

"Boss, monsters have totalled me three times," Adam said.

"Bah, same old excuse. If you can't keep your vehicle out of a giant monster's way then maybe you're not responsible enough own one in Angel Grove."

Contorting his jaw, Adam stammered. "So. . . So what exactly are you saying?"

Kali looked at his watch, then back at him. "I'm saying you're lucky Madsen has the day off tomorrow, otherwise I'd say you shouldn't come back. Now go help him lock up."

After a long day, he slunked back to his old dirty Nissan. Turning the key into the ignition, Adam slammed his head into the steering wheel. _Forgot again._ He turn it back off and reached for the paperbag in the passenger seat. His hand pulled out the bottle of power steering fluid, empty. He sighed. _Crud leaks into the belts anyway_ , he thought. Sure, his last car was way better than this, but hey, for two hundred dollars. . .

His pops texted him: _Pick up milk._

 _Oh, how am I going to tell him?_ Pops wasn't very forgiving in regards to Adam's employment. "Work is good for the soul," pops always said. Every job he got, pops always emphasized how it needed to be appreciated. And every job Adam was fired from, pops was always crossed about it. How was he gonna tell him that he screwed up being a delivery boy? No need to tell him until after tomorrow. Tomorrow was gonna pretty interesting day.

* * *

As he walked back into the pizzeria, Adam found Kali running frantically around the kitchen. He shoved a pizza into a bag and threw it at him."Park, set your watch!" Kali said, slapping a piece of paper onto the bag.

"Alright." Adam set the timer on his watch: _30:00._ He squinted at Kali as the man shoved his hands into the register. The dude's head was practically drenched in sweat, a tell-tale sign of Kali's nerves. "Is something up?" Adam asked.

"Madsen quit," he said,"and Curry is on another job. Congratulations, you're the only one I got who can deliver this." Kali slammed his finger onto the paper.

After reading the paper, Adam recognized the address."On Maplewood? Boss that's on the other side of town."

"No more excuses Park. You either make this delivery, or your fired."

 _Alright, This might be exactly what I needed._ Adam took a breath, put on his pizza cap, and ran out the door. _For you pops, for you._

Traffic was clogged up for miles on all four main lanes of downtown Angel Grove. Adam tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Peeling his eyes, he saw group of protesters with picket signs walking across the road. _Oh come on!_ Most of the picket signs read something along the lines of: _The Power Rangers Couldn't Save My House/Job/Whatever._

 _I love the Power Dudes,_ he thought. Saving people from monsters was so cool! Why would anybody have a problem with them? Was there something wrong with their heads?

Something odd happened. From the group of protesters, and from spaces between buildings. People in cloaks emerged and walked casually in between the cars. They all collectively as a group sat down in middle the busy road, ignoring all the honks from the car horns.

Adam's head dropped on the steering wheel. _I'm so sick of this town._ He checked the time he had left: _25:30._

Sighing, he grabbed the pizza and stepped out of his Nissan. One of the cloakies sat in front of his car, legs crossed. He would walk around him, but a cloakie sat in front of every single car in the road. He had to deal with at least of them to get out there.

"Hey dude?" he asked the figure.

No answer.

 _Alright, let's just take this easy._ Adam slowly raised one foot into the air and gently stepped over the other side of the cloakie. He looked down, but the cloakie didn't flinch. He carefully stepped over the hooded figure.

 _Whew, that was close._ Adam walked onto the sidewalk five feet away from the figure in the hood. Now, it was time to figure out how to get to Mapl—

The figures all got to their feet and tore off their cloaks. Their skin shined in the sunlight like blue crystal. They all had blasters that they fired into the air. Adam jumped down onto the sidewalk.

One of the creatures jumped onto Adam's car, smashing it of course. "The Dark Specter awaits you all!" the bug creature said, banging its claws on its chest. The blue-dudes than scattered among the traffic, firing their weapons into the air.

Adam crawled through all the chaos until he found a neon sign above him. _Donny's Diner_ , it read. He got to his feet and ran inside the building. "Somebody call 911!" Adam said.

In a diner filled with around forty people, nobody even bothered to look back. Everybody ate their waffles.

"Hello? Is anybody listening to me?" A loud bang rumbled through Adam's ear drums. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a huge fireball engulf the street behind the diner's glass window. He looked back to see one of the employees turn up the jazz music on the stereo. He checked his watch.

 _20:00. Screw these dudes._

As he ran for the door, he got shoved aside by a dude in a leather jacket. A posy of leather dudes crowded into the dinner with bats and chains. _Dragons,_ was written in red down their leather sleeves.

The leather dude pulled a plasma blaster out of his jacket, flipping a switch on it's side. "Hey Donny," he said, "time to start paying your protection money again!"

An old man's voice spoke up from the background. "Please, after the comet, I don't have anything left to give!"

"We'll find something." The leather dudes tore their way through the diner. Adam crawled his way to the front. He saw a cop eating some pancakes in the corner of the diner. He crawled toward him, and put his chin onto the table.

"Hey!" he whispered, but the cop continued to chow down. "Hey!"

His eyes finally met Adam. The officer scowled at him as he drowned his pancakes in strawberry syrup. "What do you want kid? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something really important?"

"Aren't you gonna do anything?" Adam asked.

The cop looked over at the leather dude as he rapidly fired ray beams all over the diner. "Pffftt….oh sure," the cop said, "I'll stop them with my laser eyes."

"Dude your job is to serve and protect?!"

"Nope, my job is wait around for a giant robot, or a man in black to show up. And also to collect minimum wage. That was pretty cute though, I'm gonna sneak out the back now." The cop then crawled onto to his knees.

Before he could even process what just happened, Adam caught one of the leather dudes picking up his pizza. He rushed over to the dude. "Hey dude, I need that for my job!"

Without looking at him, the punk just opened the delivery bag.

"Hey, you don't want to mess with me. I'm a yellow belt!" Adam said. He did the best stance he could remember, trying his best to recreate what he saw Mr. Miyagi do on the T.V that one time.

"Pffft." The leather dude pulled a handgun from out of his jacket.

"Perhaps I haven't thought this through. . . What in the world is that!" Adam wasn't playing a trick on the leather dude. A swarm of silver bees swirled just outside of the dinner window.

While the dude was staring at the bees, Adam grabbed a spork and jammed into the dude's shoulder. It snapped in half. The dude dropped the pizza, rubbed his wound, and just stared at him in confusion.

"Really?" he said.

With a shrug, Adam grabbed a plate and bashed it over the dude's head, dropping him to the ground. The other leather dudes tore their way to him. Adam grabbed another plate and threw it at the window. It smashed, releasing the bees into the diner. The leather dudes retreated, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Grabbing the pizza, he checked the time: _17:02._

He ran out of the diner and into the chaos of the streets. Okay, so if he took a left on Thirty Third Avenue, and sprinted down Maine, then he should be able to get to Maplewood with only a few—

A man in a black suit stopped him, waving a metal wand over.

"Can i help you, sir?" Adam asked.

The man in black ignored him. His little wand began to spark, and he wacked his hand against it until it stopped. "Gotta get a new issue of these things," he said.

"Uh. . ."

The man in black finally addressed him. "Citizen, please state your business for being the city during a code yellow."

"Well, I was delivering this pizza, and then…"

The man stuck his hand out. "Stop! Let's just cut to chase here. I know who you really are, so please just tell me what planet you are _really_ from?"

"Uh, my parents are from Korea if that's what you mean?"

The man just smacked his lips at Adam. "Uh huh, likely story. Do you know anything about these U. ?"

"What's an U.E.O?"Something painful slapped onto Adam's wrist. He looked down to find that he was in cuffs.

"Citizen, I am bringing you in for questioning," the man said as he pulled Adam along."We need to know if North Korea is on this possible planetary invasion."

"Dude, What are you talking about?!"

The man shoved him in the back of a car. The agent started the engine, but blueclaws smashed through the window and pulled the man out. Through the window, Adam saw a couple of dudes in black wrestling with some of the blue bug dudes.

Time check: _15:06_

Adam crawled to the front seat, finding the keys to the cuffs. He readied himself at the wheel and checked out what was in his way. A gathering of those bug dudes ran from building to building, burning them with torches. _Well, that ain't cool. That ain't cool at all._

He started the engine. The bugs rolled over his hood as he plowed passed them. Adam smiled as looked over to see those jerks fall hard on the road. He turned back. _Tree!_ He barely stopped the car in time, still busting it up.

Adam crawled out of the car and took the quickest way to Maplewood he could, pass the protesters. He swam through the crowd of screaming and complaining people. Behind him, he saw that racist dude in black chasing after him. Above him, the buzzing of those silver bees consumed the air. In front of him, a man in tattered clothes jump in his way.

"Would you sign my petition?" the man asked.

"What? No. Get out of my way," Adam said

"Please, we're trying to get some support for our lawsuit against the Power Rangers for letting us lose our jobs after the comet strike," the man said.

The racist was catching up to Adam, darting among the crowd. Adam tried to lose the whiny, but he kept blocking him. "Out of my way!"

"Please man, I need forty signatures so i can finally reach level 4!"

"Alright!" Adam signed the paper and ran.

Running as far as he could and only occasionally looking back, he saw the racist dude get lost in the sea of protesters. _Now on to Maplewood._ Adam ran past a building. It exploded into a huge fireball, almost knocking him off of his feet.

Out of the smoke, a dude helping an old lady emerged. He looked at Adam straight in the eyes. _Oh please don't. . ._

"Hey man," the dude said, "I really need some help evacuating this building."

Adam bit his lip, dropped the pizza, and ran inside with him.

* * *

Adam's forehead was drenched in sweat as they ran upstairs of the burning building .Peeling his eyes at the smoke, it was hard for him to see anything. The other dude guided him to a room. They busted down the door and helped a couple of old people back to the front door.

"Hey dude, what's your name?" Adam asked with a cough.

"Zack," he said.

Looking down, he saw that Zack had a slight limp as he walked."You don't really seem be in that great of shape right now. Why are you doing this?" Adam asked.

"It's kinda my job," Zack said.

He was gonna ask about the fire department, but he knew the answer wasn't going to be any good. They dropped off a few people at the front door and then ran back to the second floor to see if there was anyone left. "Hello!" Adam shouted. There was no answer, it seemed it was time to get back to work. Adam checked his watch—

The Megazord's arm crashed through the window. Adam ducked down as the silver bees flew over their heads. The floor caved in and they fell.

With blurry vision, Adam got himself up. He found Zack stuck under a log. His vision snapped back into focus and he crawled over to him. Straining his muscles, he pushed it off of him.

Zack squirmed and screamed as sparks flew from his shorts. _Geeze! I gotta stop this dude's pants from exploding!_ Adam thought to himself for the first time, and probably the last. He helped pull these weird metallic-fabric bands off of Zack's legs.

Something flew off of Zack's wrist. Adam caught it, rolling it around in his hand. It was a weird sparkly wrist watch, but without a clock. It was so unusually shiny that it was almost like it was—

"I can't move," Zack said, dazed.

He pocketed the watch. _I don't know who are dude, but you need to get outta here._ He gave Zack a piggyback ride back to the outside. There were no emergency vehicles around. _Geeze, why?_ This dude needed help, badly. The street sign read: _Masters_. If he took a left he would could get to the hospital in five minutes. If he took a right, he could be at Maplewood in a minute.

He looked at the pizza box sitting on the trashcan, then at an abandoned pink bike laying on the ground. Adam began to twist his watch toward his face. . .

 _Nah._ He mounted the bike, turned his pizza cap backwards, and pulled out his aviators from his biked left with Zack holding onto to his back.

 _I am The Radioactive Ninja!_

* * *

He zoomed down Masters for five minutes, and stopped just at the intersection before the hospital parking lot. Easy peasy.

The earthed quaked as the Megazord's titanic mass stumbled onto the road ahead. Sparks flew out of the robot's empty left arm socket. With its remaining right arm, It swung its massive sword at the beast, who exploded into a swarm of silver bees.

Adam took a breath. _Now!_ He ran his feet as fast as an engine. Speeding down the road, he was going almost _radioactively fast!_ The Megazord's foot stomped in front of him. He swerved left. The bees flew over his head. He ducked and swerved right.

The Megazord crumbled down to its knees and the force pushed them off of the bike and he slid into the hospital's front doors. Adam blinked rapidly. "Woah, dude! We made it!"

Zack coughed. "Thanks. . ."

* * *

His chest felt tight, he ran all the way from the hospital to Maplewood. It seemed all the crazy stuff cooled off after the Megazord fell. The bees disintegrated, and all those blue dudes disappeared, and so did the racist too. Nothing stopped Adam from being anything more than forty minutes late to the delivery.

He knocked on the door, and it opened by itself. Behind the door was metal sheet, which slid away to reveal another door. That door opened only part way. "Yes?" a lady's voice said.

"Hey dude! Your pizza's here," Adam said.

"My pizza?" she said, opening the door all the way. He saw her. Like out of a dream, she was there, tall and with long, curly, brown hair.

"Sarah Sable?!" he said, "From Action News on Channel Four?"

"Yeah, I have to eat too," she said.

"My dude! I'm so surprised to see you. I love your specials on the drug dudes doing the drug things, and your other one of the corrupt dudes doing the corrupt things, and the. . ." He stammered on into nonsense.

"Well I'm surprised to see you after all commotion going on today. It's really dangerous, you know?" she said.

"Well, it's my job, I guess. Anywho." He handed her the pizza. "Enjoy! It came late, so it's free now." Adam didn't want to take anymore of her precious time. He didn't deserve her time. "I'll see ya around."

"Wait, hold on a second." She ran back into house, ran back and put some paper into his hand. "Here's your tip," she said before returning home.

Adam unfolded thepapers. There were three of them, two fifty dollar bills, and special autograph signed with love by Sarah Sable.

* * *

The sign to Kali's Pizza laid busted on the ground. Adam carefully stepped between the shards of broken glass to get inside the pizzeria. The place was black, charred to a crisp. The mini neon signs sparked away as Mr. Kali approached him. His collar shirt had shreds in it.

"Park! My boy!," Kali said,"I'm so happy to have you back. You wouldn't believe the day I had today. Seriously? What is this town coming too nowadays?"

"I only imagine sir," Adam said, "Hey, could I have a couple of orange sodas?"

"Of course! On the house!" Kali ran behind the counter and pulled them out of the fridge. "I was so happy to get the fridge to work after all that nonsense I went through. You'd have no idea."

Adam placed his cap on the counter and grabbed the sodas. "I quit."

"What? What do you mean?" Kali said as he followed him out the door.

"Sorry Mr. Kali, but I've decided to take my career in a different direction, a direction that doesn't involve almost dying for pizza. Best of luck, my dude." Adam went out to edge of the parking lot, Kali trailing close behind.

"Park, you can't leave! Madson and Curry somehow ended up in the hospital!"

 _Crash!_

Kali's Pizza collapsed completely into itself, leaving nothing behind but a puff of black smoke. Mr. Kali dropped to his knees as he saw all of his hard work blow away from him into the air. Adam went up to the broken man.

"I guess maybe you weren't responsible enough to own a pizzeria in Angel Grove." He threw one of the fifties at Kali's knees, and left him there.

* * *

Adam leaned in his chair, plucking away at his ukulele. He felt this weird lump on his seat. Was he sitting on something? Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out Zack's sparkly watch. _Oh man, I completely to give it back to him. Dude is probably missing it right now. Whatever it is._

There was a knock at his door. Pops came in, silent and as still as a board. He gazed down at Adam through his thick lenses. "You quit your job?" he asked.

"Yeah, more or less," Adam said.

Pops just stood there, then turned back to the door. "Good. I saw the news. Kali's a jerk. That work is no good for the soul."

Adam smirked. "Hey pops!" He got his father's attention long enough to throw an orange soda. The old man caught it one quick snatch.

"Thanks," Adam said, "and I wouldn't worry much about it." He gazed into sparkles of the watch, rolling it between his fingers. "Somewhere, I think there's a perfect job out there for me."


	7. The Great Leader

Sparks flew into Jason's visor. He quickly rubbed the smudge off before returning his hand to the rattling control stick. Beyond the window, it stood there, throwing its arms at the Megazord, each strike from the arm causing the window to crack and Jason's control cage to rattle.

 _Last chance._ He brought the Megazord arm up to swing one last blow at the creature with it's sword. He thrusted his right stick forward, and made it swing the shimmering silver blade at the creature's right shoulder.

As the blade hit it the shoulder, the creature exploded into thousands of pieces of sharp silver, but this was not the typical explosion that followed a strike from the sword. The shards of silver flew and broke through the cage window.

His hands swatted away at the swarm of silver bees surrounding him. Tommy's yelled through the communicator: "Get out! Get out, now!"

But, it couldn't be over so easily, could it? This thing took out the megazord in less than thirty minutes. There was no way it was over. But, it was hard to argue against that fact when Jason had to keep constantly wiping the buzzing bees off his face and ears. The Megazord was a goner. He tapped the emergency teleport button on his communicator just as he felt the Megazord drop.

He felt an icy cold touch on his right eye. It fluttered open to see a dark blue sky through a crack in his visor. Jason sat up. Beyond his vision was nothing but swirling whiteness. All that could be heard was the howling of the wind.

His hand reflexively tightened at the shock of it all. In his grip, snow fell through his fingers. He stood up and beyond him, in every direction, was a cold wasteland.

 _Where am I?_

* * *

 **A Week Earlier. . .**

A clatter from down stairs woke him up. _Either mom and dad are back home early, or i'm gonna have some business to take care of_ , Jason thought. Deep down, he knew them being back a whole week early from their anniversary was not an option. He rubbed his eyes, grabbed his hockey stick, and hoped that Smokey the street cat just found a way into the kitchen.

He crept his way down the stairs. Once at the bottom, he held the hockey stick up with both of his hands, tightening his grip. Taking a breath, he peeked around the corner. A man in leather jacket rummaged through the cabinets above the kitchen sink.

He ran at the intruder and swung the hockey stick right at the back of his head. The man slid to avoid the strike, only to slip and crash land on the kitchen floor. Jason raised the back of the hockey stick over the man's chest.

"Stop!" the man screamed with his hands in the air. The man's face was exposed under the kitchen lamp light. His voice was very familiar. It reminded him of a person he once knew a long time ago. _No way._

"Rocky?", Jason asked, lowering the stick.

"Hey Jay," Rocky said.

Jason's brow furrowed in disbelief. It was looking at a ghost, but not the transparent kind of ghost from T.V. This a was a solid, real, one. The one that shouldn't be there, but was.

"Where have you been? And why are you in my house?" Jason asked.

Rocky leaned his back against a cabinet, and winced in pain as he turned his left leg over. Through his jeans, Jason saw a large bloody gash on Rocky's leg.

* * *

Jason trotted through the snow, pressing his hand against a cut on his right arm. The icy wind blew into his exposed eye and lips from the cracks in the helmet. His legs strained to carry the weight of lifting his metal boots out of the snow.

"Power at eighty-five percent," the computer in his helmet said.

"Why did I never ask to Zordon to shut that off?" Jason said. How much power the suit had was the least of his problems right now. Figuring out where he was and how to call the others was paramount. There wasn't even a guarantee that he was even on Earth anymore. _But if the suit burns out,_ he thought, _then how am I going to stay warm? I'm gonna to need to find—_

 _What was that?_

He turned his head toward the shuffling of snow. He peeled his eyes, but nothing was there but the whirling blue fog. Wait. Out of the fog, a shadow became more and more clear to him, the shadow of a four legged creature with pointy ears.

It growled.

He tapped his belt, and the suit manifested the power blaster into his hand. Firing a red blast into the snow, it became clear to him. In the brief flash of red light, he saw the one eyed, blue skinned wolf-thing run away, all four of it's gigantic tails behind it.

"Power at eighty-four percent," the computer said.

Wherever he was heading to, he had to get there now.

* * *

He always remembered Rocky as being a bit distant, but now it really seemed like he sitting across from a empty shell in a booth at Ernie's. Rocky just slumped in his chair, refusing to make eye contact, just looking down at his own reflection in his coffee.

Jason met Rocky in his algebra class during freshman year. Neither of them were really good at it, and that was what they had in common. Jason always offered Rocky some help, but Rocky would always turn it down with a laugh, saying:"Sorry Jay, that ain't gonna work for me." He seemed fine, if unmotivated, but at the beginning of sophomore year all the laughing stopped. Rocky just seemed angry all the time, and then he was gone.

"So…." Jason said

"So, what?" Rocky said, without looking up.

"What do you mean, 'So, what'? I want to know what you've been up to for the past couple of years?! You don't just disappear and expect no one to notice."

"Odd jobs," Rocky replied.

"Do these jobs usually end with you bleeding out in a stranger's house?"

Rocky scratched his eyebrow. "I messed around with the wrong people, and well… yeah."

"That's not much of an answer."

Rocky rubbed his forehead. "Listen man, thanks for the coffee, and the patch job on my leg, but I got to go." He dropped a tip and lept away.

Thoughts swirled through Jason's mind. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. _If he doesn't want your help, there's nothing you can do about. Just let it go._ But could he? Could he really? Something wasn't right with his former classmate; he needed help. _It's my job, isn't it?_

 _Richie could have used that help._

Instantly, he ran for the door. He ran out onto the street and cornered Rocky. "Look, I don't know who did that to your leg, but I know how you can stop that from happening again," Jason said, out of breath.

Rocky tilted his head to the side. "I'm listening."

* * *

The endless wasteland finally lead to a formation of mountains that reached up high into the sky. He trotted over to the opening of a cave mouth at the base of the mountain.

He approached the opening, rubbing the edge. _Connor, Twitch, Richie, if only I knew._ Sure, they all lived to see the next day, but it was never the same, and Jason couldn't bring himself to camp ever again. It was like what Mr. Applegate told him, "Doesn't matter what happens, you're the troop leader. It's never about you, but it is always your fault."

The light from outside exposed some boulders lying around in the cave. Jason stepped in and felt around for the biggest one. Flipping the mode switch on his blaster, he aimed it at the rock. A beam of red light drilled into the boulder until it glowed red hot. Steam poured out of it. Jason stopped and rubbed his hands over the heat.

"Power at seventy-seven percent."

 _I guess I could just wait here until they can pick my signal, if they can pick up my signal_ , he thought. The communicator just gave out static. There was no chance the others were gonna be able to trace his location. He looked around the cave as if it were going to help him find out where he was.

His heart jumped at the sight of it.

A blackened, frail corpse laid against the cave wall, illuminated by the red light. He stepped toward it carefully, examining it's weird form. It had a bulbous head, and four eye sockets. Inside it's withered hand was a chunk of white rock.

On the wall above it, there were some kind of chalk drawings. On the right, there was a wavy formation that looked like a mountain. The outline of the mountain swooped off into a straight line on the left side. He stepped over the corpse to see where the line went.

It ended next to a group of squares with round tops. _A village?_ he hoped. At the edge of the village, stood a tall shape too detailed to be just a mountain, maybe a castle.

It was a long shot to be sure, but if there was a village then he may have a way out of there. He walked deeper into the cave to find an exit on the opposite side. His foot stepped outside of the cave, when something his eye.

Another cave drawing, this one of a bunch of round stick figures gathered around another stick figure in a circle, a man. The figure they were surrounding had sharp edges and seemed to have been almost scratched out, probably nothing. Jason stepped out of the cave.

He wandered through the snow for several feet, his power draining to seventy percent. The snow on the ground became less and less to trudge through.

 _Crack!_

Jason looked down to see ice crackle beneath his feet. Ahead of him stood a long sheet of ice on the ground. His foot cautiously took another step forward. The ice held together. inching his way along the ice for a few feet, he guessed the edge wasn't too far away. He took another step.

Something jumped onto his back, flipping him over before jumping back off of him. He tried to get up, but stopped when he heard the ice crack again. He stared at the attacker, the blue skinned wolf with four tentacle-tails that were five feet above the creature's head.

Jason whipped out his blaster, but one of the tails slapped it away. He ran after it, the ice breaking apart behind him. Grabbing it, he fired at the ice. The creature fell into the water, only to crawl back out.

Three more of them emerged from the fog, surrounding him. The first wolf, the biggest of them, approached him, gnarling its teeth at him.

"Power at Sixty-Nine percent."

Jason took a breath, flipped the blaster into it's blade mode and looked straight into the big one's eye. "Let's go."

Jason lunged at it.

* * *

"Come on, hit it!" Jason yelled.

Rocky spun around to try and kick the punching bag, only to hit the floor on his face and eat the matt. Rocky banged his fists onto the matt. Nervously, Jason shifted his eyes over to Tommy, who was smiling at Rocky's failure.

"That's it. I'm done," Rocky said as he walked toward his bag.

"What a big surprise, the creep is giving up," Tommy whispered into Jason's ear.

He shushed Tommy. _Could you at least wait until he's gone?_ Jason thought. Rocky headed for the door. "Stop!" Jason tried to block the door. "Oh come on, man. You were so close this time. Just give it a couple more days."

"Yeah right, we've been at this for days. Listen Jay, it's been fun, but this is just distracting me from what I need to do," Rocky said.

"Yeah, and what's that?"

"See ya Later." Rocky went through the door.

Jason stood there for a moment. _Alright pal, we'll have to play this one the hard way._ "I'll see you later," he said, opening the door. "I've got some business to take care of. Call me if you need me."

"Jase, he's a bad egg!" Tommy called out. "You're only gonna hurt yourself!"

Jason followed Rocky close behind, following him through every turn and street corner imaginable. Rocky ended his tour of the city with a visit to The MatchboxClub. He followed him in, surfing through waves of people to get to the other side of the building.

Jason came out of the backdoor, but Rocky was nowhere to be seen. Something rattled and he hid behind a trash can.

Peeking over the trash, he saw a guy in a red ski-mask violently bashing another guy over the back with a plasma rifle. Running into the action, Jason snatched the rifle away from the masked man. The other guy ran into the night.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?" the masked man asked.

 _Please tell me this isn't who I think it is,_ Jason thought as he pulled the mask off.

"Let me go, Jay! Let me go!"

* * *

"Forward!" Jason commanded as the wolves guided him through the snow on the other side of the lake. They sniffed the ground as they pulled Jason along with their tails wrapped around his arm.

He could've shot the leader of the pack after their little wrestling match on the lake, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, and they just kept on doing everything he said after that. They guided him along the whirling blue fog looking for any sign of life.

All four of them stopped and unraveled their tails around his arm. Jason walked toward them and bent on his knee. A couple run down huts laid before them.

"Good Smokey," Jason said, scratching the leader's head.

He lead them forward, and more and more little huts made of stone appeared, each one missing some pieces, some a roof, others an entire wall. He sighed. _My only hope is now up in smoke._ He had only sixty percent power left, and he knew the suit was going to automatically demorph soon.

The fog dissipated, exposing the huge structure that was somewhere between a medieval castle and a pyramid, not too different from the one from the pocket dimension.

He pushed onto the huge stone doors, which opened with relative ease. His pack flooded into the grand endless halls of the castle. The ceilings were ridiculously high, and patter of the wolves claws echoed throughout the castle.

"Welcome to my humble abode, dear Red Ranger," a voice echoed throughout the hall. Finally, he might be able to get some answers.

"Hello? Can you help me?" Jason call out into the hall.

"Of course, but the real question is: Can you help me?" the voice came from a shadow gliding down the hallway. The voice sounded strangely familiar to Jason, but something was off about it. The voice of the shadow was accompanied by the sound of rolling wheels and clattering chains.

"It is your job after all, to save people," the shadow said as it entered the light from the doorway. Jason's eyes widened. Withered, frail, and sitting in some kind of electric wheelchair was whatever remained of Lord Zedd.

"Shocked? Surprised? I'm afraid our last encounter left me a bit . . . tired, and this is where I go when to rest, or use to go to anyway." Zedd spoke in a voice more mechanical and filtered than ever. His large exposed muscles were now just as shriveled as the corpse Jason found in the cave.

"What happened here? What happened to this whole planet?'

"Time. Everything breaks down eventually," Zedd said, struggling to keep back a cough. "Let me give you the grand tour." He turned his wheelchair around. Metal cords connected to the ceiling rattled all the way down to his back.

Jason walked behind Lord Zedd as he spoke. It was weird. He saw him in a state that he never imagined Lord Zedd ever being in, vulnerable. The filters on his voice now seemed to only mask the creaking voice of an old man.

"Centuries ago, my people came to this planet and discovered it's indigenous population, the Ka'zar. They must have been very ancient, since they had technology far more advanced than anything that we could have imagined," Zedd said.

"Advanced enough to build a pocket dimension on earth?" Jason asked.

"Indeed."

"Why were you looking for it?" Jason asked.

"My ancestors promised it to me. I was entitled to it." Zedd coughed.

"Entitled to what?"

"Here, the Ka'zar developed a technology to prolong life beyond what was ever thought possible, but it was destroyed in the war against Zordon. I hoped so badly that I could find another machine that could do that same thing." Zedd coughed until black sludge leaked out of his brain. "I am the last of my people, Red Ranger, and I barely have enough power to keep myself alive.

They stopped in front of a station with a raised platform and a couple of consoles. The screens were cracked, and a metal sphere wired to the ceiling laid on the smashed platform.

"Here is the last teleporter. All the others,and the escape pods, were destroyed in battles long ago," Zedd said, "I'm too weak to repair it myself, but perhaps you could repair it?"

"And why would I want to do that?" Jason asked.

Zedd slumped forward in his chair, revealing how the cords punctured deep into the flesh of his back. "Do I appear to be a threat to you?"

Jason just stared at him, speechless.

"I don't know what you and Zordon have planned for me when we get back, but whatever it is, it has to better than rotting here, and wouldn't you like to go home as well?" Zedd stuck out his trembling hand. "Do we have a deal?"

It was crazy to be sure, but Zedd had a point. Time to end this ongoing battle with Zedd, and in what better way than to do something Zedd would never do if the roles were reversed, show mercy. Jason grabbed Zedd's hand.

"Deal."

* * *

"Alright Rocky, no more fooling around. What is going on?" Jason asked.

Rocky stared off into space.

"Tell me!"

Rocky sighed, "The guy was part of the Red Dragons. They've been operating in Angel Grove ever since the Power Rangers showed up. They've been laundering money out of business like The Matchbox Club for years now."

"And why are you involved with them?" Jason asked.

"Sometimes people make you an offer you can't refuse."

"That's why you dropped out of school?" Jason asked.

"Yeah. Their leader, Zane, is nuts. Things got too weird for me, so I sold them out to the police, but they got out."

"When?" Jason asked.

"Last month," Rocky said, "when the comet knocked the power out. I hear Zane just walked out of the prison, like it was nothing. Since then, I see him talking to this old guy, and he's helped him on the way to looneyville. The dude has been stalking me. He did this to me." Pulling down his shirt, Rocky exposed the scars on his neck.

"I'm gonna end him, and you best stay out of my way," Rocky tried to walk away.

"Wait," Jason said, "where did you get the blaster?"

Rocky turned his head to the side. "They trade them around like playing cards.I think they pick them up on the corner of 33rd and Colt, behind The Giving Tree Homeless Shelter. I don't know who supplies them."

"Look," Jason said, "your not gonna take out an entire gang of loons with alien weapons by yourself. I'll help you take the gang down once and for all, but have to promise to let the law take care of Zane. Deal?" He reached his hand out.

Rocky just stared at Jason's hand.

* * *

Billy had given Jason and the others a quick education on how the teleporter worked, so Jason was familiar enough with what he was working with. He replaced a couple of wires with some spares that Zedd had lying around. Reconnected some loose parts, and lifted the matrix sphere back in place.

"Is it ready yet?" Zedd asked.

"Almost, we just need a power source," Jason said. It wasstunning how casual the conversations have been between the two. He almost forgot that his talking to an intergalactic dictator.

"Unfortunately, we are in short supply of that," Zedd said, winded.

Jason looked at the battery compartment under the console and unclicked his power coin from his morpher. They used this trick on their teleporter whenever the Command Center was offline. Though depleted, the red power coin could give the batteries one last charge to take him and Zedd home.

"Don't worry, I think I can take care of that." Jason hovered the power coin over the battery. The power coin glew as it shot electricity into the device.

Something squealed in the distance.

"Smokey?" Jason said. He hadn't seen the wolves for hours.

The squealing started again. It had to be Smokey. He quickly put the power coin back in morpher and followed the squeals.

"Where are you going?!" Zedd yelled as Jason ran past him.

Jason walked down several hallways, taking many lefts and rights until the noise led him to a doorway that was cracked open, orange light shined through it. Jason opened the door and entered.

 _Oh, my…_

Smokey and the others were strung upside by the same metal cords connected to Zedd. Jason slowly approached Smokey. The wolves were wasting away as electricity flowed up the metal cords.

They weren't the only ones. Beyond them, thousands of people, looking exactly like the corpse in the cave, were strung up on man-sized shelves that seemed to stretch on and on into infinity.

"You should've destroyed those hounds when you had chance, Red Ranger. They were going to destroy you, one way or the other," Zedd said, rolling up behind Jason.

"How?" Jason asked.

"I told you, Red Ranger. They knew how to prolong life, this is how."

"You're a monster."

"Please," Zedd said, "these people were the remnants of a dying culture when we found them. They begged for us to lead them, for me to lead them. You see, they all volunteered for this, because they couldn't stand the idea that their _Vlem-Sur-Tor,_ their Great Leader could die. They gave their lives to me, all one million of them."

"No," Jason said, "They all couldn't have agreed to that.

"But they did, because they understood that victory requires sacrifice. Don't you see Red Ranger? It doesn't matter how many battles you rangers fight. If you were to destroy me, it wouldn't matter. Because, you'll never be able to destroy the real monsters the world." Zedd waved his hand over the crowd of people.

Electricity flowed from the cords and into Zedd's back. His muscles enlarged. The cords dropped down from the ceiling, bent over onto the floor, and lifted Zedd's chair up in the air like legs.

"Thank you Red Ranger for fixing the teleporter, by the way," Zedd said, "Hacking your transport beam must have put a lot of pressure on the ancient thing, but now I'm free to pry the power coin from your dead body, and use it to get back to earth."

Jason ran, Zedd's chair crawling after him.

* * *

While laying on the roof of The Giving Tree, Jason handed Rocky the binoculars. They saw the Dragons pulling boxes off of the back of a truck. "Alright, we'll get some pictures and turn them in," Jason said.

"Not before I use this," Rocky said pulling out a hand-blaster

"No, don't," Jason said.

"Yes, please don't," a voice said. They looked around and saw a man a huge blaster pointed at them. He grabbed them, but Jason wasn't worried. This was all part of his real plan.

They were dropped on their knees not far from the delivery truck. A guy wearing a huge pair of sunglasses strolled up to them. He combed his fingers through the blonde stripes in his dark hair, and sat down on a wooden crate. "Disappointed in you Rock," he said, "very disappointed."

"Sorry, In-Zane," Rocky said.

Zane pushed himself off the crate. "Clever, Rock. Very clever. But at the end of the day. . ." One of the Dragon's handed him a Katana. He unsheathed it, gazing into its shimmering blade. "Sharp knives cut deeper than sharp words."

Rocky groaned.

Zane's face twitched. He grabbed a spray can from one of the Dragons and tagged the crate. He drew a red eye onto it. "It's a shame that you couldn't just see the things in the way I do. I have a vision, a vision that requires me to pick up the world's slack. It's time to purify this world with fire!"

Zane licked the Katana and raised over their heads.

The White Power Ranger jumped down and shot his blade in half. The Blue and Yellow rangers wrestled the other Dragons to the ground. Zane ran away, Rocky chasing after him, Jason chasing after Rocky.

Jason cornered Rocky in the alleyway. "Rocky, it's over. Let the Power Rangers take care of it."

A loud buzzing went through the city. Jason looked over and saw a swarm of silver bees flying over. The bees swirled until they formed into the shape of a giant monstrosity. _Gotta call on the Megazord and fast_ , Jason thought. When he turned back to Rocky, he was already almost out of sight.

"Sorry Jay," Rocky yelled, "that ain't gonna work for me."

* * *

Jason hid from behind the teleporter console, fumbling with the wires. _Always your fault, always your fault, always your fault._ It seemed like the last twenty-four hours had proved to be nothing but a big disappointment for him. All of his hopes were now completely shattered. He lost Rocky, and now he had just given Zedd the means to take over the earth.

The metal cord wrapped around his neck and pulled him up to Zedd's face. Two more plunged into his back. Jason felt being drained as Zedd's muscle mass returned.

Zedd connected one of the cords directly into the teleporter console, and he flipped it on. The teleported began to spark and crackle. The whole castle shaked.

"What is happening?!" Zedd said.

"I know how to fix a teleporter, and I know how to break it too, how to overload it," Jason said with a smile. Chunks of the ceiling fell to the ground.

"But, you'll destroy your only way back!" Zedd said.

"Victory requires sacrifice."

Zedd dropped Jason, and his chair lept away into the falling rubble. Jason headed to the front door.

Something fell on him. Everything fell on him.

Blackness, nothing but blackness. He was so cold. But then, there was light, a blindly bright light. Was he dead? A tight pressure wrapped around his wrist. He could actually feel his wrist again. He could actually feel again. He felt himself being dragged by his arm. His skin scraped against the cold snow. The pressure released from his wrist, and he was flopped on top of something.

His vision came back to him. Smokey and the others waited by his side. With a wince of pain, Jason turned himself over to see what he was laying on. It was a glass window. Behind it, a chair stationed at a console. A ship, an escape pod was half buried in the snow. _Zedd doesn't know anything about anything._ Jason looked into Smokey's eye.

"Good boy."

* * *

Rocky felt a little bad about leaving Jay behind last week, but he was only gonna get in his way. Just by himself, Rocky was able to get his hands on a bike and track down Zane to his home. Rocky readied his hand-blaster and knocked down the door.

Drinking his orange drink, Zane just sat in his chair, completely calm in the face of a breakin. He looked at Rocky straight in the eyes. "Would you like a glass?"

He fired at Zane. The red beam bounced off of Zane's forehead like a rubber ball and hit the nearby table.

Rocky's jaw was gaped. His hand trembled.

Casually, Zane got up from his chair and strolled toward him. "Surprised?" he said, grabbing Rocky's weapon. "What can I say Rock? Prison changes you." He snapped the alien gun in half with his bare hands.

Rocky ran for his bike. He must of zoomed down the road at forty miles per hour, but it didn't matter. Zane ran after him, laughing and with his tongue waving in the air. With only his two feet, he got within inches of Rocky.

Zane reached for him.

* * *

Tommy tapped his fingers on the console as he watched Billy and Aisha comb over the charred remains of their teleportation pad. "Anything?" he asked. "Have you guys found anything at all?"

"Sorry," Aisha said, "but whatever happened to Jason's beam overloaded the circuits. There is no way we are even gonna be able to trace him for another couple of weeks."

"Months, actually," Billy said. He must of realized he shouldn't have said that, because he immediately hid his face behind his clipboard. "Well, that is only the worse case scenario, not accounting for certain factors. . ."

Tommy rubbed his head. _No,_ he thought, _This isn't how things are suppose to happen. I already took care of this. Jason has out there somewhere._

"Do you know what this means, Tommy?" Zordon called from behind him.

He didn't answer. _Please don't say it._

"According to Jason's wishes, if something were to happen to him," Zordon said, "Tommy, you are to become the active leader of the Power Rangers until his return."

 _Nope. . . Nope. . . Nope._

.


	8. Evolution

Shaking, Tommy's hand pulled the key out of the steel box. His reflection in the jewel stared back at him as he pressed the button. TIngles ran through his body as the room blurred into a haze of white particles.

Pressure pounded around his eyes and he tried to rub it off his face. "Guardian! I need your help!"

When he removed his hand from his face, she was there. The bluish glow shaped into her wide reaching wings. Her pale face and golden hair faded into existence. "How may I assist you," she whispered.

"I need you to help me get Jason back," he said.

She floated over and placed her fair hand on the key. "PIcture it, be It."

The bladed spun around the jewel so fast that it became invisible. The jewel pulsated light. Every muscle in Tommy's body tightened so hard that they felt like stone. The haze around him quickly snapped into blackness.

There he was. Jason, back in the cockpit struggling steer the megazord as the consoles exploded around him. He heard Jason's voice, but it was weird and muffled, he sounded like he talking underwater.

Tommy tried to run, but every step he took made Jason seem farther away. Not just Jason, but everything, The whole environment crawled away from him.

He reached his hand out, but Jason and the cockpit faded into the whiteness. His eyes moved rapidly, looking for something that wasn't there. :"What? What happened? I was right there?!"

"Sorry sir," she said," the key requires more energy before it make another journey again."

"How do I charge it?"

She curled her wings around her shoulders. "It requires an interdimensional energy source that is virtually unknown in your universe."

"So . . . he's gone?"

"I'm sorry." Guardian's form became transparent.

"Wait, there's gotta be something I can do."

Her voice trailed off into a distant echo. The best Tommy could hear her say was: "The key will tell you when power is near."

 _Flash!_

Tommy stood alone in the dark vault. _I'm sick of this_ , he thought, _I'm sick of getting nowhere and i'm sick off all this bull piling on top of me. No more messing around. If I can't find Jason, then I can at least find out what he was doing._ He put the communicator to his face.

"Billy?" Tommy said.

"Yes?" Billy responded.

"We're going back to The Giving Tree."

* * *

Billy was always good at providing distractions for Tommy, so he asked Billy about a bunch of random Biology related stuff on their walk to The Giving Tree. Not that the subject really mattered, he could've asked Billy a question about anything and he would give you every detail imaginable, maybe too much detail, but the information overload was what he needed right now.

For the past week, it seemed impossible to take a shower or a nap without a storm of very bad things swirling in his brain. Everytime Tommy closed his eyes he couldn't help think about the last time he heard Jason's voice. Shifting that thought away only led him to think about Zack. Why didn't he just stay home that day? Why didn't those jerks at the hospital let them visit him? Trying not to think about that just led to him thinking about that weird warning Bones gave to them, "Actions have consequences." He understood that. That didn't bother Tommy at all. What was weird was not knowing the what those consequences were exactly. Was what happened to Jason and Zack a consequence of what he did? But how? What happened to them had nothing to do with what Tommy did in the pyramid.

"-and that is a caterpillar's metamorphosis into a butterfly," Billy said.

Tommy snapped back to attention. "Oh, so why does it do that?"

"What do you mean?" Billy asked.

"Like, why do they completely change their body? What is the point? Why don't they just stay as caterpillars?"

"Well," Billy's voice sounded a little uneasy, "a caterpillar's ancestor had some sort of a mutation in their genes, and that mutation was passed on and mutated further until the modern process metamorphosis became common for all caterpillars. There isn't much of a 'why'. It's a fact of there Biology. They just do it."

"Huh." Tommy wasn't really paying attention.

They stopped in front of the brass building. The shiny letters on the sign were wrapped around in the branches of a golden tree. The poster on the glass door read: _The Giving Tree, a special_ _ **branch**_ _of The House of Hope,_ is dedicated to the care and needs _of Angel Grove's less fortunate, whether it be food, housing, work, whatever our little angels need_.

"Wow, that is condescending," Tommy said. "Do you think the 'work' might be supplying blackmarket plasma rifles to street gangs?"

"Possibly," Billy said,"there's only one way to know for sure."

The rotten stench punched Tommy in the face as soon as he opened the door. He covered his face and immediately saw just how much of the company's budget went to the outside of the building.

Dim, dark green fluorescent light flickered on the people as they sat on the dust ridden floor. Looking at it reminded him of something from a movie about the Victorian Era.

"What th—" Tommy's foot gave away. He would've slammed his head on the floor if Billy didn't catch him. On his shoe, was this weird green slime that wasn't too far from the kind of the gunk Tommy found in his shower drain after a monster battle.

"Geeze. I didn't know people in Angel Grove had it this bad. Did you?"

Billy looked around as if he on a alien planet again. "I couldn't even comprehend the idea of . . ."

"Come on," Tommy said," maybe it gets a little better the farther we go."

It didn't. When they entered the kitchen, they did find that people were eating in proper chairs and table. But they also found out that the slime that was one Tommy's shoe was their dinner, maybe breakfast and lunch too.

Bile rose a little in Tommy's throat when he saw a frail old man in stitched together clothes try to put a spoon full of that slop into his mouth, only for the man's shaking arm to drop it into the bowl.

Something tapped on Tommy's shoulder. He whipped around to see an elderly woman behind him. Was she really elderly though? Tommy couldn't really make out her age. She had the lines and wrinkles of age, but her brown eyes and blonde hair were far younger than her face.

"Excuse me," she said in a raspy voice, "Have you seen my Freddy?" She unfolded a picture in front of her face. He was a kid, couldn't be any older than eleven with red hair and a blue cap. Tommy made a note of what he looked like.

"Please, he's been gone for months."

"Haven't seen him mam. But I'll keep an eye out," Tommy said with the best smile he could muster.

"Thank you," she shoveled off with her face to the ground.

Tommy snapped his head back to Billy. "As soon as we figure out what's going on, we need to find a way get these guys some help."

"How? I cannot build a machine that will make money or missing family members out of thin air," Billy said.

"We'll figure it out. First, we gotta find out how much the people working here know about the shady stuff going on in their own backyard," Tommy said.

He walked over to the counter where they served the green slime. It was completely deserted. Nothing there but the silver tubs of slime. Nobody seemed to even be in the kitchen. The lights behind the counter were shut off.

A shape moved through the darkness. Tommy squinted his eyes to see it was an outline of person walking toward the counter. "Excuse me, sir. I—"

Tommy's shirt shredded apart as it dug its claws into him. It wanked him up close, and he smelled the stench that came from it's pinches as it screeched at Tommy. He could only get a glimpse at the demon-bug before it threw down the counter, knocking over the slime.

A sharp pain went through his forehead as he lifted it off the tile floor. Billy knelt next to him and hit the emergency alert on the communicator. A blood curdling scream pierced Tommy's eardrums. He lifted himself up from the counter. The bug rampaged through the shelter, picking people up and throwing them like them rag dolls.

"It's morphin' time."

He sliced Saba right into the bug's shoulder. It didn't even scream, and now Saba was stuck in there. The bug just turned it's head to look at him square in the eyes. Tommy tugged hard to get Saba out, but it was like it was stuck in diamond. Without breaking it's gaze from Tommy, it grabbed Saba and snapped it in half.

"Oh my . . . crap." Tommy just dropped what was left of Saba on the floor. He gulped down some air. _What now?_

Blue plasma blasts bounced off of the bug's chest. Billy kepting walking closer and closer to the creature as he fired at it, but it was like throwing marbles at it.

In a split second, it crushed it's claws into Tommy's helmet and dragged him off his feet. The sparks from the helmet burning his eyebrows. Before he even knew it, the creature slammed his head into Billy's. Tommy's face smashed violently against the inside of the helmet.

It threw them to the ground. Tommy tried to crawl off of Billy, but It grabbed Tommy, slammed him to the ground, and raised its claws over his face. Dazed, all Tommy could do was stare into its eyes, its black, empty, cold eyes.

The bug flew off of Tommy. He strained to lift his neck to see what happened. The bug tugged and pulled at a metal net that was keeping it captive.

"White Ranger," a voice called.

Tommy turned over to see a man in a very familiar looking black business suit that was completely inappropriate for the California heat.

"We need to talk," The E.S.B agent said.

* * *

It sucked the teleporter was busted. It sucked even more that the rangers had take the bumpy as hell ride to the E.S.B facility. The ride wasn't exactly doing Tommy's aching head any favors. Each rattle made him feel as if his brain bouncing like a beach ball in his skull.

The others weren't too happy either, Tommy could tell. Even through the helmet, it obvious Billy was nodding off. Kim's leg was shaking. Trini curled up into the best ball she could make in her seat.

The truck came to a whiplash causing stop. The back doors bursted open. "Hello," the agent said coldly, "I'm agent Walker, Chief Executive of the Extraterrestrial Security Bureau."

 _This guy again? I wonder if he's lighted up at all,_ Tommy thought. "Hey, I remember you. Congrats on the promotion!" he said.

Once again, the disdain in Walker's eyes beamed through the sunglasses. "Thank you, I remember you very well," he said with a grin. "Say, isn't there usually six of you?"

 _Crap, what should I tell him?_ Tommy scrambled for words.

"Well, uh . . . uh . . ."

"They're indisposed at the moment," Billy said.

 _Oh, thank god._

"Great, just great. Follow me. We have some serious business to discuss." Walker led them into the facility.

It howled and clawed at them as they were led into a long, narrow, glass hallway, illuminated by dim blue fluorescent light. Behind the glass, in little sectioned off areas, bugs jumped at the rangers and banged their heads into the glass. One bug started licking the glass as they walked by.

"Gross," Kim said, "where did these things come from?"

Walker along casually and snapped his fingers, and quickly, a agent went up to Tommy and handed him a paper. It was a picture of the night, but with some kind of weird big white spot in the middle of the it.

"Several months ago," Walker said, "NASA detected the presence of what they called a "distortion-rift" near Pluto. Two weeks later, these unidentified extraterrestrial organisms started appearing in Angel Grove. We believe they're using the distortion as a means transport into our solar system."

Tommy dropped the paper. "Wait? You've been aware of these things for months? And you didn't tell us?"

Walker finally stopped. He turned to face the rangers. "We decided that this was an Earth-centric problem that didn't need to concern you. At first, it seemed these were animals just attacking whatever they thought was a threat, so we tried to take care of the problem ourselves discreetly."

Billy knelt down to observe one of the bugs in in their cell.

"However," Walker continued. "It seems that these creatures are becoming more and more . . . organized."

"All hail the Dark Specter!" the bug screamed, scaring Billy to the floor.

"Disturbance in number seven!" Walker screamed.

Black smoke flooded into the bug's cell. "All the hail the beginning of the new cycle!" The bug fell onto his knees and coughed. "Hail the new age!" The bug coughed again. "All Hail th—" The bug finally rolled onto the floor.

"Well, at least he has commitment . . .I guess," Trini said.

"They won't tell us anything," Walker said, "but we're getting the impression they are warming up for a larger attack."

"Why do you believe that?" Billy asked.

"The distortion is moving, and it will be within earth's atmosphere within a matter of weeks."

Tommy's mouth was gapped at this point.

Walker placed his hand on Tommy's shoulder"These creatures attack and disappear without a trace, but if we had access to your technology then maybe we can finally . . ."

"No! You can't just go behind our backs like this and then ask for our stuff! We suppose to work as a team!" Tommy smacked his hand away.

"And I see that worked out well for your other team members, wherever they are."

This was insane. Tommy never trusted these paranoid goons, even he couldn't imagine them doing anything this incredibly stupid.

"Please White Ranger, the human race needs that technology," Walker said.

Tommy gazed at the passed out bug. _Alright. If I'm gonna play this game, I'm gonna do it my way,_ he thought. Tommy turned to face Walker. "Give us all your files the aliens, in three days we'll have a tracker for the bugs. We'll how thing go from there."

"And a sample of one of the Creature's DNA," Billy interjected.

"What?" Walker said.

"Do you have any other choice?" Tommy said.

Walker sighed. He adjusted his sunglasses. "Fine."

And with another snap of Walker's fingers, a couple of agents handed Tommy a cardboard box heavy with papers. The men quickly guided Tommy and the others back to the truck.

As the engine started, Tommy couldn't help but second guess himself about what he planned to do. _It's a long shot_ , he thought, _but it's the only thing I've got._

* * *

Walker starred eagerly at the filth that laid beyond the glass. It twitched and squirmed as it slept, how disgusting. He was ready to see these things get wiped of the planet for once and for all, and if that meant asking the rangers for help, so be it. Hopefully, he wouldn't have deal with much longer anyway.

Agent Shaw handed him a file. "We got thermal imagery scans. They seemed to located within sixth or seventh region in the desert."

"Excellent," Walker said, "ready the choppers for Plan B."

* * *

Nowhere. Tommy had spent days in Billy's workshop helping to build a scanner, or a detector, or a tracker, or something to find these creatures, and it all went nowhere. All they had to show for their work was a cluttered desk of junk.

"Alright, now hand me the plasma-triplizer," Billy said, leaning over a dismantled T.V remote.

Tommy quickly got up from his chair and rummaged around Billy's shelf. He picked up a long light bulb-looking thingy.

Billy looked up for only a second. "No that's a vectormatrix. I said a plasma-triplizer."

"Oh, Obviously." Tommy ran to the back shelf and brought back a microchip thing.

Billy grabbed the chip, looked at for a second, then handed it back. "No. No Zack! Th—" Billy stopped himself. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. " I am sorry,about that."

Tommy took a seat."It's fine, man. It sucks. Our pal is stuck in the hospital in who knows what kind of condition. Jason could be anywhere in galaxy, and we're stuck here working on something that should've been taken care of months ago!"

Tommy rubbed his face, it still felt raw after the beating the bug gave to it. He grabbed what was left of Saba from the desk, and checked himself out in the blade's reflection. At least his face didn't look that bad, that's something at least.

His fingers ran through the broken edge of the blade. Crazy, that thing snapped it clean in half, like it had be sliced through. He couldn't imagine the strength that would've taken.

"Where are we on repairs?" Tommy asked.

"The teleporter might not be operational again for at least a month. As for the Zords, the girls are working diligently on test flights, but the Zords motor functions are disabled indefinitely," Billy said.

Tommy slammed his head unto the desk then drove his fist repeatedly into his head. "How did this happened? We're awesome! How did we all of this bad luck? Do we even know what took out the megazords?"

"Xombus Zenophila, they like to colonize from planet to planet. They build a little hive underground and rest for a thousand years. Based on their age, I estimate they've only been on earth for a few years. Something must stimulated them and made them wake up early," Billy said.

"But we don't know what?" Tommy asked.

"Not at the moment."

Tommy ran his hands all through his head. "I'm telling ya, Billy. Sometimes it feels like . . . like our luck just ran out for good. It's like something out there wants us to fail."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." That's what Tommy said, but deep in his heart he knew. He just didn't _want_ to know. "Anyway, let's get back to work. How's the scanner coming?"

Billy picked up the repurposed T.V. remote, held down the power button, and waved in front of the vile of alien blood the agents gave them.

 _Zap!_

Billy dropped the remote and stuck his thumb into his mouth. "Ouch! Their blood has no identifiable signature. It overloads by scanners trying to pick it up. Almost like it is not made from anything in our universe."

A spark fired in Tommy's brain. It couldn't be a coincidence. Maybe this was a sign they weren't out of luck yet. Tommy ran down to the vault room, grabbed the key, and ran back to Billy.

"What are you doing with that?"

Tommy quickly thought of something to say to Billy. There was no way, he was gonna tell him what he did to help Jason .He remembered that Billy did some testing on the key last month.

"You said this thing maybe had interdimensional properties, right?"

"Yes," Billy said.

"So, maybe these bugs don't even come from our universe. Maybe this thing could help us!" Tommy said.

"Maybe." Billy went over and grabbed the key from him. Billy rolled it around in his hands carefully.

 _Alright, don't make it obvious you that you know this thing works,_ Tommy thought. He tilted his head to the side. "Hey, check out that thing on side. Is . . . is that a button?"

Billy pressed it in. The jewel pulsated, the blade rotated faster and faster. It started making a noise Tommy never heard before, like a beeping sound.

"Tommy! Observe!" Billy said. The vile of alien blood started to look different. It was glowing, glowing purple.

Billy released the button and the blood returned to normal.

"Excellent! Now we need to inform the bureau," Billy said.

Tommy rubbed his neck nervously. Now it was time to tell Billy what his real plan was. "No. We can't," Tommy said.

"Why not?"

"Billy, do you really trust those morons after they went behind our backs?"

"I suppose not, but . . ."

"Trust me, those guys are too shady. The only people wa can afford to trust right now is ourselves," Tommy said.

"I . . . I guess that is logical, but they're expecting a response from us," Billy said.

"They'll get one, after we gather a little intel of our own. Now go get the girls, we're heading out, that's an order."

"Yes, sir." Billy went out.

Tommy stood there alone with the key for a moment. Another moment between him and his thoughts. _No, I don't feel bad about leaving those E.S.B nutjobs in the dark, at all. Those guys vital information away from my team and I— I just did that to Billy. Ouch . . . that actually hurts._

* * *

"I swear he was right there!" Kim shouted as she handed the key over to Tommy.

Tommy took a sip of his third coffee. Next to him, Trini was leaning against a trash, trying to discreetly pick the sleepies out of her eye. Kim kept anxiously cracking her fingers. The three of them have been scoping out the city for hours, while Billy worked on the teleporter at the Command Center. They took turns holding to key to see if they could find a bug in hiding. They must of walked for fifty miles from dusk to almost dawn, or least that what Tommy's aching feet told him.

After a long night of nothing, Kim swore up and down that she found a bug with the key, but all it led to was a empty alleyway. Three brick walls boxed them in. Nowhere to run, and they would've noticed if a bug tried crawling away.

Kim went on. "He was turning onto this ally from fifth avenue, but when I turned to call you guys over, he was gone."

"Why are you lying?" Tommy said with a smirk. He had get some joy out of this wasted night.

"Not funny!" she said.

Trini just gave up and sat down on the trash can. "Tommy, can't we just call the E.S.B and go home? The bugs would've already blown the planet up three times by now."

Tommy paced around a manhole."No, we gotta find something that—wait a minute . . ." Of course, the manhole! He waved the key over the cover, and just as expected, It illuminated a pulsating purple light.

Something was off about the cover, It wasn't really that hard for Tommy to pull it off of the street. On a closer look, there seemed to be cracks that ran deep into it, maybe through it. He tossed it aside.

They all gathered around the edge of the hole. Only three rungs of the ladder were visible, after that, blackness. The sour smell of sulfur rose from out the depths. He imagined that smell was probably pretty normal for the Angel Grove sewers, but still, it Tommy feel a little sick.

"Not it," Trini said.

Tommy sat down over the edge. "Alright, I'll be back in fifthteen minutes. you guys st—"

"I was joking," Trini said.

"Yeah, there's no way we're letting you go down there alone," Kim said.

"Guys, there's only four of us left and it's . . ." He couldn't even finish. Kim's eyes had vicious soul burning powers, while Trini's pout could melt the heart of a snowman. Not to mention the crushing guilt of all those times Jason told him never to enter an unknown situation alone that was weighing on him. Tommy lost."

" . . .It's morphing time."

It was hard to keep a solid grip on the ladder. Each rung was slippery and slimy. Did sewer maintenance just not exist in Angel Grove? How long had it been since any body checked out that manhole cover? These questions rattled in Tommy's mind and led him back to thinking about the poor conditions that the people in The Giving Tree were living. He had an in itching feeling that there be something wrong with the entire town.

"Hey Billy, are you getting our feed?" Tommy asked.

Billy's voice came in through the communicator. "Yes, I'm keeping an eye on you."

Finally, Tommy felt his boot plunge into the cold water. Luckily, it only came up to a little higher than his ankle. Though, It was a little creepy that Tommy's bright white boots seemed to completely disappear in the black water.

They trudged through the water in water in silence, accompanied only by the echoey sound of rushing water from who knows where. He was getting some serious flashbacks to walking through the pyramid. The crumbly walls, the long unending corridors, even that sulfur smell seemed like it came straight from that old temple. It was uneasy for Tommy to keep getting those constant reminders of that day.

Billy called in."Tommy, can you walk back a couple of feet?"

"Uh, sure." He took a few steps back. "What's up?"

"I thought I saw something on the wall," Billy said.

"Found it!" Kim called out from behind them. Tommy and Trini gathered around her.

 _The eye_ , etched in chalk, stared at them.

 _You again? Why does thing keep showing up?_ Tommy thought. As if the reminders of that day weren't piling up enough already. He reached his hand out to touch it, and flung it back when his fingers went straight through the brick.

"Pocket dimension," Tommy said, "this town is getting weirder and weirder."

They didn't even say a word to one another. Collectively they all took one step into the wall.

 _Splash!_

Tommy tumbled head first into a pool of water. Behind him, the girls slid down a rushing waterfall, their armor smacking hard onto the jagged rocks below.

"You alright?" Tommy asked, helping Kim up.

"Yeah, I g—oh my . . ." Kim tilted her head to the side.

Tommy looked behind him. _No way._ Below him laid a skyline of little huts organized into straight lines, leading toward a gigantic pyramid. There wasn't just one, but two ancient cities living under Angel Grove.

"Billy, are you seeing this?" he asked.

"Yes, apparently the first civilization must of colonized more of Earth than we initially thought," Billy said.

Trini knelt down over the skyline. "You think the bugs are what's left of the people who built all of this?"

"Maybe, and they're back with a vengeance," Tommy said, "Let's move."

They descended down the rocky mountain. _But why?_ Tommy thought. _Why are they attacking us? Billy said they vanished way before humans showed up. Actually, I still don't know why they went away in the first place._ His thumb rubbed against the key hanging from his belt as he climbed down. _I guess I already know the answers to those questions._

At the base of the mountain, they scattered and wandered around the little cobblestone street nearby. Quickly, Tommy stuck his through one of the hut's windows. Empty. He looked across the street to find Trini doing the same thing. She gave him the thumbs-down. On the hut next door was Kim, thumbs-down.

Coast was clear, he took a step toward the middle of road. "Alright, le—"

 _Thump-thump._

Someone's coming! He raced back behind a hut.

His grip tightened on the rock wall as he waited. From behind the hut, his eyes caught a glimpse of them as they shuffled by him. Five of them, in hooded cloaks treaded down the road. He grabbed the key and waved in front of his eyes. The black cloaks briefly illuminated purple.

As soon as they were out of sight, Tommy ran to meet the girls on the street.

"How much you wanna bet they're all at the pyramid?" Trini asked.

"I'd bet my seven dollar mascara," Kim said.

"Me too," Tommy said, "we gotta figure out what these guys are up to. We need a way sneak in."

They stood in silence for a moment.

"Maybe. . ." Trini ran into one of the huts.

"Maybe. . .what?" Tommy asked.

"Ah ha," she called out from inside.

"Get out of there!" Kim said, "what are you thinking?"

Trini popped out of the hut archway. "I was thinking we could maybe go classic for this one," she said, cloaking hanging off her arm. "Maneuver K."

* * *

Nothing a put a thin piece of fabric between Tommy and death. They all had to demorph so that the cloaks would cover themselves completely. Even with the long the cloak around him, he felt even more exposed than that dream when had to give speech about the civil war in only his boxers.

They found the bugs gathering around the entrance to the pyramid, and slinked their way into the crowd as they all piled through the lifting gate.

Tommy kept his head down. The muscles of his hands clenched in tight around his waist as he tried to hide among the crowd. HIs feet took only the tiniest steps forward. Aching, his neck demanded he looked up in front of him.

For a second, he lifted his head to see the grand, almost infinite interior, only defined by the sharp, twisted edges of the arches. The sound of their footsteps echoed on and on through it.

The girls bumped into each of Tommy's sides. They huddled close together as they were herded into a vast circular stone room with a stage that rose out three feet over their heads. The gate slammed shut behind them.

They were all packed together in the dark, but then a light shone onto the empty stage.

"And now," a voice echoed through the chamber, "the mouth of the Dark Specter!"

The chamber broke out into cheers. The bugs waved their fist into the air as some figures moved from the dark into the light. Tommy bobbed his around to try and see what was happening, but the forest of limbs and heads kept getting in the way.

"Do you see anything?" he asked.

"No," Kim said.

"Is that a wheelchair?" Trini said.

The figures came into the light, one wheeling in another. The one in the chair seemed different. It looked like he was wearing a white robe, and he had what looked a burlap sack covering his face with the eye inked onto it.

The figure was wheeled to the center of the stage, where he outstretched his arms. Two more bugs came out of the dark and placed a microphone in one of his hands, and a book in the other.

The man in the chair leaned lazily into the mic. "My brothers," he said, and whatever murmuring was left in the chamber fell silent.

 _What is all of this?_

The man, if it was a man, continued. "One the edge of forever, the Dark Specter lies, waiting. . . for us." He opened the book on his lap. "The universe is about to be recycled. Humanity, and all other forms of life as we know has had it's season, and now the Dark Specter has called for us , to demand us to commence the next stage in the evolution of the cosmos."

Whispers echoed throughout the chamber.

"For far long, we have languished in the dark among the vestiges of the old guard and the old ways. We have been held back by those who claimed to have power over us. We have been trampled over, spat on, and left to starve and die."

The whispers rose up higher, and the stomping of feet clanged around them.

"But no longer shall we lie in silence! For now, we will burn down this grove!"

The stomping sped up rapidly.

"And on it's ashes we will user a new age, a new world. A world without fear, without a government, and without the Power Rangers!"

The chamber broke out into insane uproar. Tommy stood, stunned as the bugs danced and cheered about death.

"Tommy," Kim called from what seemed like far away, before shaking him back to reality.

"Yeah?" he said.

"I think that's our cue to leave," Trini said.

"Right." Tommy sidestepped through the crowd, only to bump his shoulder into one of the bugs. The key slipped from Tommy's belt. It tumbled onto the floor. Tommy froze.

The bug bent down and picked the key up. "I'm sorry," it said with a deep, guttural voice. "Is this—"

Black eyes widened, the bug stared at Tommy. He looked at Tommy straight in the eyes. _Crap, he saw my face!_ Tommy thought. The bug took the key and ran into the cheering crowd, jumping between bugs.

"Get out of here," Tommy whispered to Kim before running into the crowd.

"Tommy, wait!"

Tommy jumped stepped around the tantalized cheering crowd. _I gotta get the key back before they realize what it is!_ The bug was at the very edge of his vision. He saw it head to the left, in the direction of the stage.

He tried to keep his head as best he could as he wiggled his way around the bugs. He passed the edge of the stage, where saw it's shadow go into a little archway.

He followed it through the arch and up some stone steps, his heart and his mind racing. _We're surrounded. If this bug squeals, we're toast._ He pushed himself up to the top of the staircase.

The room had to be above the stage. The tattered curtain on his left let small slivers of light through into the empty space. Being stuck alone in a small, dark place with one those bugs was not something Tommy wanted.

"Tigerzord!" he said as he morphed.

"You're a Power Ranger?" a voice called out.

"Yeah, I take it you guys aren't huge fans? Where are you?"

The bug seemed to be somewhere on Tommy's right. "They tell me you're monsters, that you're taking the earth away from us."

"I'm not the one mindlessly attacking civilians! If you got a problem with us, take with us," Tommy said. He treaded carefully around the room. "And I'm sorry, but the earth doesn't belong to you. I don't know when you freaks are gonna realize that."

"Just leave me alone. I don't want any trouble."

"Then give back what you took and I'll be outta here," Tommy said.

Silence, then a shadow hoppled it's way to the light. The key glinted in the little light beams, and so did the bug's claw.

"Here, take it," it said.

A lot of things went through Tommy's mind in short amount of time as he reached for the key. Surprisingly, how he was getting out of there wasn't one of them. He just knew that he didn't know much of anything about these bugs. He only knew that they were dangerous, psychotic, and were planning something horrible for the town and maybe the whole universe. When his fingers wrapped around the key, he thought about how smaller this bug was compared to the others, half the size. What he had to do seemed obvious.

He smash the key against the bug's head and tackled it to the ground. Something flopped out of the bug's hood as it went down.

"What are you planning?" Tommy demanded.

"Please, I don't—"

Tommy grabbed his head and rammed it into the stone floor.

"Tell me!" Tommy said with another slam to the ground. He heard the bug's crystal hyde crackle under the pressure.

The bug squinted in pain. "Please, I jus—I just want."

"What?! What do you want?!"

"I want my mommy!"

He released his grip. "What?"

Tears leaked out of the bug's black eyes. He lifted himself off the creature .Finally, Tommy was able to read the emotion it had on its face since it first saw Tommy, fear.

Tommy's eyes gazed over the creature, and he saw what had fallen off the bug in the struggle.

A blue cap laid on the floor.

 _Freddy?_

The light burned Tommy's eyes as the curtain slid away. He blocked the ray with his hand. Below, all of the bugs stared back up at him, gaped in awe of him. Dazed, he just stood there, frozen. The kid scampered away from him.

" _Oh, I can show you the world_. . ." a voice echoed out.

He slid his eyes downward. Yes, the tune was coming from the man with the sack over his head. Tommy gulped.

" _A thrilling chase, a wondrous place. . ."_

No, it couldn't be.

" _A whole new world for you and me. . ._ " The man slipped the sack off his head. Like a ghost, there he was. White beard, crazy hair, cracked lenses, crooked smile, all the terrifyingly familiar features of Dr. Forrester.

He laughed at Tommy for a moment, but his joy quickly gave way to a malevolent gaze. "My brothers, my fellow angels, attack the deadly deceiver!" he screamed.

The sea of bugs swarmed the stage. They jumped onto the curtain climbed their way up to Tommy.

Finally, Tommy's mind was able to communicate with his legs. He tried to make a break for it, but before he even made a foot, they all grabbed him and lifted him up into the air.

He pulled and punched away at the swarm as they tossed him around. Every landing made him twist and contort like a human ragdoll. His body started to feel more and more jellfied.

One bug gripped him tight over its shoulder and jumped onto the curtain,tearing it up as they slid back down to the stage. They grabbed his limbs as Forrester wheeled his way to Tommy.

Forrester smiled gleefully. "Now White Ranger, Let's dis—"

A fireball consumed the ceiling. Junks of rock fell onto the bugs around him. The ground shaked.

"What?" Forrester yelled as a puff of pink smoke surrounded bugs scattered away as another fireball exploded behind them. They dropped Tommy and ran for Forrester, picking him up and knocking his book off his lap.

"And so it begins!" Forrester yelled as they pulled him into the smoke.

Tommy laid there on the ground as the explosions wore on. For the first time in a while, he felt truly helpless.

Shapes came out of the smoke, and they got him back on his feet. A noise rang in the noise slowed morphed into a voice.

"Tommy?" the voice said. It wasn't until then that he realised that it was Kim and Trini

"Kim?" Tommy asked hazily.

"Yes, come on, I'm almost out of arrows," Kim said as they carried him away.

"Wait," Tommy said. He limped over and grabbed the book off the ground.

"Alright, let's get out of here!" Trini yelled.

* * *

He climbed out of the manhole and crawled onto the street. Peering up, he saw his worst nightmare come to life. The bugs ran and ransacked the buildings around them. They marched the street with torches and threw them into the windows. They lifted up cars like they were nothing and tossed and whatever crossed their path.

Tommy stumbled his way to bug that was using a street lamp as a bat. Trembling, his hand took the blaster out of his holster. The world shook and shifted around as he aimed it at the bug.

The bug stared at him curiously for a moment, then lunged at him.

In the blink of of his eye, so much happened around Tommy. The bug was gone. He was lying on the street, his back against a brick wall. The girls tugged at his shoulders, and a man in black approached him.

Walker, It had to be Walker. "Sir," Tommy managed to say.

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Walker looked at Tommy's belt. He must of seen the key. "That's the device you promised, isn't it?"

"It's more complicated than that," Tommy said, "It's some really advan—"

Two men in S.W.A.T uniforms appeared next to Walker. "Surrender it now, or be declared enemies of the planet."

"There's something you don't know," Kim said.

"The bug's aren't aliens, they're human!" Trini said.

Walker paused for a moment then he turned around to see the fire going on behind him. "Is that so?"

"Yes," Tommy said,"it's Dr. Forrester, he's somehow—"

"That's is a matter for the E.S.B now," Walker said.

"Come on!" Trini said.

"Listen, all of you. I'm going to make something perfectly clear. The era of the Power Rangers is over. This rock that you're standing on? It's bought, paid for, and protected by _me._ I decide what's best for it. And I'm not going to let anybody change that, not those freaks, and not you either!"

And with the snap of Walker's fingers, the S.W.A.T aimed their blasters at them.

"Surrender the device!" Walker said.

"Don't do this. . ." Tommy whispered.

Walker opened his mouth, only for a S.W.A.T car to tumble by behind them, crashing into a nearby lamp post. The S.W.A.T men ran off as bug jumped onto the crushed car.

Kim stabbed an arrow into the ground, releasing a pink fog around them. Trini helped Tommy back to his feet, and they all headed off onto the backroads. As they ran, Tommy could hear Walker yell out from a distance.

* * *

Tommy rubbed his hands together rapidly in the workshop. He watched Billy run his fingers through the tattered, rotted book that they recovered, but his brain was far away from the situation. _I screwed this up, I screwed this up, I screwed this up,_ Tommy kept repeating in his head. The E.S.B might not of had the key, but that fact didn't make Tommy feel that much better. There was no telling what they would do next, and a little bit of guilt of rose in his throat. Keeping the key away from Walker seemed like the right thing to do, but still. . .

And then there was was so unreal. Tommy hadn't thought much about him since he was locked up, but now he was all Tommy could think about. How did he get out of jail? How did he have such control over the bu—people? And the scariest question of all, did him dismissing Forrester like that back then somehow contribute to Forrester transformation to what he was now? The man was clearly bonkers, but still. . .

 _Some leader I turned out to be. . ._

"So what's happening to these people, Billy?" Tommy asked.

Billy looked up from the book and handed Tommy a piece of paper. He unfolded it to find the white distortion rift among the stars.

"My best hypothesis," Billy said, "is that this rift in space is emanating an energy, or some type of radiation, that is mutating citizens so beyond recognition that they're barely similar to any life forms in this universe. That is why we couldn't build a device to detect them."

Tommy rubbed his temples. This was heavier than he could've' possibly imagine. "So, why isn't everybody a bug right now?"

Billy adjusted his glasses."It could be for any number of reasons, the energy moving slowly through space, the energy dissipating in our atmosphere, or maybe the mutation requires more time develop in certain people. Whatever the reason, some people are mutating at a faster rate, and it's obviously changing their brain chemistry to become more animalistic and. . . susceptible to influence."

"Even from a crazy old man," Tommy said,"what's in the book?"

"This is. . . this is an alien translator's nightmare," Billy said. He held up the book for Tommy. It seemed to be an old notebook, actually several old notebooks scotch taped together The pages were yellow with age, and age several different color ink splotches crowded the alien writing.

"It appears to be several different alien languages thrown together," Billy said, "it moves from language to another. It changes even within a sentence."

"So do you have any idea what it's about?"

"It appears the myths and legends of various cultures smashed together to create one complete, if incoherent, narrative. It has everything from the MirinoI story of the universe's creation, to the Aquitian pantheon," Billy said.

 _Creepy_ , Tommy thought. "So, do you know anything about this 'Dark Specter' thing?" he asked.

"No, there is nothing that goes by that name in any mythology I have studied. I even asked Zordon, and he did not know either," Billy said.

 _Great! Another dead end,_ Tommy thought as he looked at the picture of the distortion. He seriously doubted that Forrester just made a mysterious entity up out of nowhere. He was too smart for that. He had to know—

 _Oh no,_ Tommy thought.

For the first time, Tommy had a good hard look at the distortion, and now he couldn't unsee it. The long but round white of the distortion, surrounding a black dot in the center of it. The eye, it was the eye.

"Keep working, I'll be back." Tommy ran for the vault room. If the eye symbol was connected to Forrester and the mutants, who were connected to the distortion, which was somehow connected to the key's power source, then Tommy knew exactly who to ask about the Dark Specter.

* * *

The vault room melted into the white light. He lifted the key's glowing jewel away from his face, but the light from it stayed in place. The light grew and morphed. Her wings tucked in, her dress twinkling, her hands clasped together, her form complete.

"Yes, Mr. Oliver?" she asked.

"What is the Dark Specter? I want to know everything," Tommy asked.

"As you wish," she said.

The white light dimmed and dimmed into felt sand fall onto his shoes, pilling up until both of feet were covered in it.

Wind blew out of nowhere, blowing his hair straight into his face. When he moved the hair away from his eye, a flash of bright light forced them shut.

Thunder crashed, and he opened his eyes. The pyramid loomed over Tommy, and on the top of that pyramid, the distortion hovered. It came closer and closer to the top of the pyramid. It opened and closed over and over again, like it was blinking, like it was alive.

"Before time began," Guardian said, " there was nothing, no stars, no space, no life, just the darkness. The Ka'zar, or what you call, the first civilization believed the darkness was alive."

Tommy was listening, but still in awe of this thing. If it could even be called "awe". What he was feeling was indescribable.

She went on. "Then came the age of light, the age of time, the age of life. The darkness was repelled, cast away from the light and into its own world. And so now, the darkness watches and waits until the end of the age of light, when the barrier between the light and the dark are no more. It will then swallow the universe of light and bring forth its own dark age."

Tommy stared at the eye in the sky, and sick bile rose in his throat. His eyes began to burn. He had to look closed his eyes, but the truth he knew still burned inside him.

 _I let it in. . . when I saved Jason I opened the door and let it in._

He opened his eyes and faced Guardian. "Is there any to stop it? Anyway at all?"

She tilted her head to the side.

From the sand arose a man with golden armor, carrying a silver sword. The man climbed up the of the pyramid and disappeared into the eye's light.

"The Ka'zar," she said," believed they had brought the Dark Specter into their world by using the gate, so they used a sword made from pure light, the only thing that could scare it, that could kill it. The Dark Specter fled from your world."

"Yeah? Where is that sword now?"

"It is just a legend," she whispered,"but it is written that they rid themselves of the sword."

"Why?"

"Because they were afraid of it. For they realized they could not kill darkness, darkness must always exist. If any of them tried to kill the darkness, then. . ."

The eye closed, and then it opened, it opened so far that the entire night sky was pure light. The pyramid exploded into dust, and in a flash, Tommy was left alone in the dark.

She continued. "Then they themselves would become the darkness. . . the new Dark Specter."

The vault room came back. He laid in the fetal position on the floor, his stomach in knots. He'd screwed things up more than he ever realized. Maybe he always knew, but this time he couldn't deny it. He had destroyed the entire universe.

"Tommy!" Billy's voice called from behind the door.

Quickly, he put the key back in its box and ran for the door. The door slid open, revealing a wide eyed Billy.

"You have to check out the news!"

They rushed over to the main chamber, and on the viewing globe was the news headline in bright red: _The E.S.B_ Declares _State Of Emergency._ Billy ran over to the platform where he hit some buttons on the console before huddling with Kim and Trini on the steps.

Zordon's face materialized on the tube.

The news anchors appeared. "—after exposure to the radiation, some victims are prone to violent episodes," the male anchor said as they cut to footage of a bug running towards the camera with a torch,"the factor of what makes someone more prone to the mutation has to be determined.".

Audio of the female anchor played over footage of Walker standing at podium. "The President has signed complete temporary control of the city over to the agency until further notice."

Walker's audio cut in. "Do not panic and stay strong. This great city has been through a lot and will continue to take on whatever is thrown at it. People, I will stand by you and make sure that you and your family remain safe. We will Identify this threat and eliminate it."

 _No, no, no._ Tommy's world was falling apart in more ways than one. He turned over to Zordon. "What should we do?" he pleaded.

He had never seen that look on Zordon's face before. Wide eyed, face frozen in pure shock. He looked down at the rangers. "Tommy. . . I don't know."

Red lights flashed throughout the command center. Alarms blared. The viewing globe went to static before cut to another image.

Eyes peeled, Tommy could barely make out what he was looking at. Three black helicopters flying over the desert, and something else too. A black object increasing in size as—

"Get down!" Zordon yelled.

The wall of the Command Center collapsed and junks of it flew over Tommy's head. He ducked down under the spewing fireball.

His eyes opened to a spinning, smoking world. He crawled and look around for signs of anybody, anything.

"Rangers! Get to the safe house before the—" Zordon said before another fireball cut him off.

Red lights illuminated on the floor. He crawled toward them. Through the smoke, he could see the lights surrounding the emergency exit tunnel. Wearly, he reached down for the first rung of the ladder.

He flopped down into the tunnel, straining his shoulder. He looked up as he descended. Above, there was no light. "Hello!" he called out. "Guys!" he called again. "I'm down here! I'm down—"

He coughed so hard he fell onto the floor of the tunnel.

Dizzily, he looked up as the tunnel door began to slide shut above him, but not before a figure came out of the smoke.

"Guys?" he asked.

The figure reached a hand out toward Tommy. The hand had a gun in it.

"Wait!"

 _Boom._

Tommy was left alone to bleed out in the dark.


	9. From the Pages of Dr Forrester

Fear not, my brothers. Though our chance at omnipotence was destroyed with the burning of the Atlantean saucer of Byzantium, we shall not let this setback stop us reaching the epitome of our quantum vibration. You know what the sapphire tablets have allegedly said: _G'more tuv sach blu kor mo._ The Dark Specter's approach is nigh. He whispers to me of his arrival by channeling his essence through the Voxan's base on the hollow-moon. He is very pleased with our progress and hopes that we continue to our DNA activation. We are the verge of ascending upward in the evolution of the cosmos. Unlike the Ka'zar, we will not be sent backward in the time stream to pay for our spiritual delinquency again. Dark Specter has chosen us to be his disciples when the Gate finally opens during the seventh cycle of Joth. We must carry the darklight through the madness. Even if it means carrying it through a fifth war between the triads and the reptilluminati. The other six prophecies, of the insectoid anthropologists from 2885, have already come to past with election of John Quincy Adams, the annexation of Alaska, and the death of Walt Disney, among other things. So, we must continue onward with the alchemical transmutation of our Kazarian crystals, and build up our psychokinetic energy fields. Though Dark Specter has warned us of the possible dangers of creating a synthetic Mercada, I believe it will be beneficial to our cause to craft as many sacred geometric shapes as possible, as they will help us build our mental capacities against the lies of The SIx Deadly Deceivers of Angel Grove. Fear not my brothers. Though the E.S.B have destroyed the Atlantean saucer and silenced John F. Kennedy before he could reach ascension, I can assure you that the Plutonian's Hades Experiment will fail. Dark Specter will create a whole new world for us.


	10. Revolution

Whiteness came. Things formed as his eyes opened, a window, a chair, what looked like a bed with feet laying on it. It was hard to tell what they were because they were so bandaged up. They looked more like pillows than feet.

But then it hit him. They were his feet, Zack's feet. _Man, I'm still here!_ Zack thought. Why did hospitals have to be so boring? He'd been stuck there for days and days with nothing to do but watch the crappy Lifetime movies they left on the T.V. Why did the nurse refuse to give him the remote? _Why can't I watch my Andre Benson? Why—_

Zack stopped that thought, and he looked back down at his feet. Maybe watching Andre's sweet moves wasn't exactly what he needed right now. But a distraction would be nice. The only noise in the room came from the droning beep of the heart monitor, and that was on the good days.

Some days were bad. Occasionally, Zack heard this horrible shrieking coming from the hallways. Just randomly in the middle of the night he would snap awake to these screams. Sometimes they were just the screams of the nurses. He didn't much of those. It was a hospital after all.

There were other screams, though. Weird ones, ones so high pitched that felt like someone was shoving glass into his ears, no matter how far away they were. These screams were always followed by the sounds of glass smashing and a gurney wheeling by his room.

He called for the nurse the first time it happened. She smiled and said that it was no biggie and told him to go to sleep. She laughed as she walked away, holding a sponge to a nasty gash on her head. After that, Zack just covered his face with the blanket any time the screaming started again.

A mechanical whirl went off of in the room. He darted his back and forth to see where it was coming from. The window, a steel sheet was sliding down and covering the window.

"What th—nurse! Nurse!" Zack called out from the top of his lungs.

The blonde nurse came out with a bright smile on her face, and several men in black suits standing behind her.

"Hey honey," she said, "just relax. I'm ensure you everything's gonna be fine. We just need to take some precautions."

The men in black suits approached Zack. Three of them standing on each side of his bed.

"Wait! Stop!" he screamed as they tightened the leather straps onto his skin.

* * *

The man's grip was so hard that Ben Douglas thought that he was gonna tear Ben's arm out of its socket. The man in black grabbed Ben's greying hair and rammed into the windshield.

"Stop resisting!" the man said.

Ben's jaw ached. He could taste the blood leaking into his mouth. "Please," he tried to say with his face against the windshield, "I didn't do anything!"

"Enough, give him the test."

Another man in black came around and slammed a metal briefcase on the hood of the truck. He flipped a switch and swiveled a couple of dials on the top of the case then he unhooked a metal wand on a cord from the case.

Searing pain rang throughout his arm as the man in black slowly bent it backwards. Ben winced in agony.

The man took the wand. "Now hold on sir, it will be over soon."

"Let him go!" a shrill voice called out from the distance.

 _Oh no, not now. Please don't let it be. . ._ Ben thought as he barely managed to flip his head to the other side. It was Rachel, and she was running in her pink nightgown toward the truck. Her eyes red were with tears as she ran across the lawn.

"Honey, stop!" Ben yelled.

"Get her," the man said.

Two more men rushed out and made a wall to block her. She kicked and scream at them before they tackled her onto the lawn, bending her arms behind her back.

"Let her go you bastards!"

The man didn't even respond. He just waved the wand over Ben's head for a few seconds. A moment later, the briefcase started beeping like crazy.

"Alright, let's bag 'em," the man said.

He slipped handcuffs onto Ben's wrists and dragged him off of the hood. Sloppily, Ben tried to wiggle and worm his way out of the man's grip as he was around back to the trailer, but his head was getting dizzier and dizzier, and the man was much younger than he was, much stronger. The man threw him into the trailer

His feet quaked as they shut him in, because the last thing he saw, before the door closed, was six more government trucks. Each one perfectly lined up with every house on the block.

* * *

 _What? What's going on?_ Tommy thought as his vision gradually returned to him. He was moving, being pushed on wheelchair. Around him, a hallway was zooming by him, and he was being pushed toward some double doors. A sign hanged on top of the door. It read: _Level 1 Area and Kitchen_.

Through the doors, he was wheeled into a wide area with a concrete floor and a metal ceiling, where flickering fluorescent lights hung. People in tattered clothes ate at little folding tables together.

 _Giving Tree?_ Tommy thought. But no, this place seemed a little cleaner than the giving tree. The wheelchair stopped at a table, and two men in grey coveralls helped him out of the wheelchair and onto the table's seat.

A wicked burning went through his side as they moved him. Tommy gritted his teeth at the pain.

"Easy, easy," one of the men said,"you're home now."

"What are talking about?" Tommy said with a wince. "Where am I?"

The other man dropped a pink brochure on the table then a bowl of green slime. "We found you on the street and we patched you up," he said, "please eat up and make yourself at home." The men then started heading out the door.

"Hey, wait!" Tommy said, but it was like they didn't hear him. They just turned around and stomped out like robots.

 _Patched me up?_ And then, it all came back to Tommy. An agent shot him. Quickly, he rolled up his shirt to see what happened. There was a yellow bandage tapped onto the side of his stomach. _So, am I suppose just keep this on for the rest of my life, or what?_ Tommy thought.

He tried hard to remember what happened to the Command Center, but the only thing that came to mind was him limping through the escape tunnel and then wandering around in the street after that.

 _Oh no,_ Tommy felt his wrist, his communicator was gone. Without it, not only couldn't contact the others, but unfortunately Zordon made safe house only accessible via teleportation beam, to keep it secret. He needed to find the communicator now. Luckily, he was able to feel his morpher in his left pocket.

The pink brochure stood out on the grey the table. He snatched it like would run away and read it: _The House of Hope has over five different shelters around the city. All dedicated to one singular cause: to protect and give hope to those who don't have any at all._

On the bottom of the paper, it read: _Join the Team! We're always ready to accept new members, especially to those who don't have anywhere else to go. You can eat, sleep and work at our shelters and further our cause of bringing hope to the people._

"Creepy," Tommy said. He looked down at the bowl of green, and finally he was able to see what they were serving to people. Some kind of weird chicken soup that smelled like a hospital.

"Well with food like this, why wouldn't I want to work—"

An ear piercing sound rang throughout the room. He darted his head around find the sound was coming from a little stage in the corner. A skinny guy with a shaved and grey coveralls was adjusting a mic on the stage.

All around Tommy, people lifted up their dirty faces from their bowls and gazed at the stage, wide eyed and mouths gaped.

"Hello brothers and sisters," the man on the stage said, "we live in a dark time now, a time where our government can come into our homes and just take our families away from us for the simple crime of existing."

The crowd cheered a little weakly.

"Why are they are gone? We don't know! We must of scared them, I guess. Though I don't know how, since we are the ones barely making by under the helpful watch of big brother, while they are the ones who are taking people off the street and hauling them off to some camp somewhere! Why are they scared?!"

The crowd let out a collective: "Yeah!" Tommy sanked down in his seat.

"And where, may I ask, are the Power Rangers, huh? Where are so called protectors, while the government is doing this to us? Are they on vacation?!"

The crowd began stomping their feet on the floor as they cheered. _This is nuts,_ Tommy thought, _do they really think that we're not trying our best?_

"Hey folks, how about each of come up here and talk about all the things that've happened to us after the Power Rangers showed up."

Tommy seized up and withdrawn into his seat. He wanted to be as small as possible.

A large, fat man went up to the mic, and there was something was off about him. He kept his down and his eyes away from the crowd the whole time he talked. "You see, my daughter's very sick, and I use to run a little convenience store, you see. And, uh, when that comet came in, it fried up all the electricity, you know? I lost the store, you see, and, uh, I had to sell my house so I could pay off my daughter's doctor bills. I don't remember no comets comin' in before the Power Rangers showed up."

The big guy stepped down, and Tommy saw why he was looking down the whole time. The man's left cheek had crystal growing on it. Slowly, but surely, he was mutating.

An old man with a white beard went up. "My whole farm burnt down after a spaceship crashed on it. The government didn't help me, and neither did the Power Rangers." He walked off, scratching at the crystal growing on his neck.

Then a skinny lady who couldn't stop shaking went to the mic. She talked in a raspy voice "My husband was kidnapped by a bunch of alien cheerleaders, or something like that. I can't even believe half the stuff that happens on my street every other week."

 _Come on, lady! That's not our fault, and we brought him back to you!_ Tommy thought.

The lady scratched the top of her head. "After he came back, it was only a matter of months before he was taken again, this time by the government."

Tommy rubbed his temple,while also trying to bring his head as close to the table as possible. However, he had to lift himself up a little bit when he realized Kali from Kali's pizza was making his way to the stage.

Kali looked straight at the crowd with malevolent eyes."Ever since the Power Rangers showed up, I've been noticing a lot more kids going around with those ray guns, thinking they own the city. A bunch of those kids robbed my pizzaria not to long ago. The police didn't do anything about. And to top it off, my pizzaria got destroyed by a swarm of alien bees."

The guy in the coveralls finally went back on the stage. "Thank you, thank you all. Before we close out, I would just like to remind you that no matter how bad things seem. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It may not be what you expected, but it's there. You might be a little afraid of what's happening to your bodies right now, afraid that you might be turning into a monster, but just remember that everything, no matter how strange, has its benefits." The guy then flashed the widest grin Tommy had ever seen.

The crowd cheered and applauded.

Tommy bolted for the door. He had to get out of there as soon as possible. He did feel bad for those people, but the Power Rangers can't be everywhere at once, and plus, these people were sick. They were sick and whoever was running this place was taking advantage of that. Something strange was going on around here, and he needed his friends to help him figure out what.

 _If they are still alive. . ._

He ran from white hallway to white hallway, making endless turns that seemed to go nowhere. Everything looked the same, white walls and brown doors with little red signs next to them. Some doors had windows, but that was it. That was all he could he as he ran by. Tommy stopped and looked around at maze surrounding him.

In the corner of his eye, there was a short little hall, too small to lead another endless hallway. Ranger instincts kicking in, he slid across the wall to the hall, and slowly peaked his head out the corner.

Surely enough, there was a bright red exit sign hanging over a couple of metal doors, but there was also two guys in coveralls standing there with rifles strapped around their shoulders. They stared blankly into space.

Tommy banged his into the wall in frustration. _What kind of place is his?_ He looked back and forth, and his only other option was another huge hallway with a _Level 2 Area_ sign above it. He guessed any opportunity to learn more about this place before leaving should probably be taken, and a suspicion of what was going on here was growing in Tommy's mind.

He wandered the level two area for awhile, and the same walls and doors repeated themselves over and over, until he came across some double doors with little windows in them. Peering through, he saw what looked like people laying in beds. It was hard to tell because everybody seemed wrapped up in white cloth. Tommy got a little closer to the glass. Something seemed to be moving around.

 _Slam!_

A lunch tray hit the window. Tommy jumped back. In the room, a man screamed as he tore at the bandages wrapped around his ripped at them, freeing his nose and mouth. In agony, the screamed at a pitch higher than any human could.

Nauseous bile rose in Tommy's throat as he saw little pinchers come out the man's mouth, wiggling their way out of him. Tommy had to close his eyes and cover his mouth for a second.

When he opened eyes his again, he saw a couple of ladies in coveralls pushing the man back on the bed. One held onto his hand as its finger curl and bend in way that were just natural. Little crystal claws extruded from the ends of the fingers.

A lady ran to end of the bed and seemed to be reading to him out loud from a book she had. Tommy couldn't hear, but he could tell she was shouting from the book until she was out of breath, and that seemed to finally calm the man down.

Tommy got out of there before he was spotted. That suspicion grew even bigger in his mind and he wanted to know how deep this rabbit would. He spotted the _Level 3 Area_ sign and went for it.

It wasn't long before he found more double doors. Keeping low, Tommy peered through the window.

It was dark. A black room, only illuminated by candles burning all over the place, but Tommy could see the bugs very well. These were real bugs, almost completely mutated, sitting in chairs around a speaker who was slamming their claws onto a podium.

But, who was it? Eyes peeled, Tommy got as close to the glass as possible. Could it be? It had to be. It was Zane. He had been almost completely transformed into a bug with pinchers and everything, but he still had some of his funky hair left on his head, and his shades, and his leather jacket with the sleeves torn off for his crystal sharp forearms.

What was that creep doing here? Tommy leaned his head into the crack between the doors to listen.

"And there I was," Zane said, "left penniless and without a. . ." he made the most insincere sob Tommy had ever heard, ". . .without a family. Made into a criminal by society, by our government. Forced to steal from my fellow brothers to survive, and with no help whatsoever from the people who claim to be heroes." He continued on with his fake crying and wailing, banging his head and fists onto the podium.

 _Yeah, I do know who are talking about, and I don't remember you ever asking for help,_ Tommy thought.

Zane "composed himself" and looked back at the crowd. "And now, the man of the hour. The man who has shown us all the way. Dr. Forrester!"

 _I knew it!_ Tommy thought. His suspicion had been correct. Forrester must of been using this joint for who knows how long to get people to join his little Dark Specter fanclub.

Forrester casually walked to the podium, smiling, exposing the crystal formations on his teeth. "Thank you my boy," he said to Zane, "now, I'm glad to see that most of our level four members survived the attack on our home by the Power Rangers."

 _Most? They're invincible. All of them had to survive, you liar,_ Tommy thought.

Forrest spreaded his arms wide open. " Brothers, levels three and four alike, I have message for you. Revolution is at hand! Are power only grows as the Dark Specter approaches. The E.S.B can only slow us down for so long, and with the Power Rangers taken out of the picture we can—"

 _How does he know about what happened to us?_ Tommy wondered. Though, he didn't have much time to think about it as three bugs in the room started heading toward the door.

He ran down the hall, darting his eyes around for a place to hide. Heart racing, he ran past three doors, quickly trying every door knob, all locked. Only one door left in the hall, and jiggled the knob in hopes it would spontaneously open.

The door next to him spontaneously opened with a bug lumbering out of it in the opposite direction. Without thinking, he slipped behind the door and shut himself in the room.

He waited there in the dark for a moment, then a horrible thought came into his mind. Tommy jiggled the door knob again.

Locked. Tommy's mind was actually right this time.

 _Crap, now how am I gonna ge—_

"Lunch?" a voice said.

Tommy looked behind him and gasped for air

 _Oh, my. . ._

* * *

Arms chained to the ceiling, the tall figure stared down at Tommy, illuminated only a small window light. He leaned closer to him, rattling the chain that ran from his neck to the floor.

"So?" the figure said in a crackly voice, "where's my after-torture lunch?"

Tommy stumbled for words. "Uh. . . uh, sorry I came in here by accident, but why are you here, like this?"

The figure tilted his head to the side. "Tommy?"

 _Finally, someone who can help me get out of this nightmare,_ Tommy thought. "Yeah, it is. Who are you?" he said as he carefully stepped closer to the figure.

The figure leaned his head into the light from the window, shining the crystal growing on the right side of his face, exposing the scars and claw marks etched on the left side of his face. His right eye was completely black and enlarged, while his left eye was only a little red.

Tommy jumped a little because he could see whose face it was, even through all the mutations. "Rocky? Is that you?"

"Yeah, so?" Rocky said.

Man, Tommy always thought that kid was gonna get himself locked up, but not like this. "How did you end up here?" Tommy asked.

"Zane. I went after him, then this happened. He thought it would be funny,"

"When then I guess it wasn't such a good idea to run off on Jason while he was trying to help you, wasn't it?" Tommy said.

"Whatever."

 _Why that arrogant little. . ._

"Listen," Tommy said," I came in here with a watch with a little walkie-talkie in it. It's gone now. Do you think th—"

"Oh, they snatched it. They don't want any contact with the outside. Once your in here, there's no getting out."

"I need that watch. Do you have idea where they might have taken it?" Tommy asked.

Rocky hanged there in silence for a moment.

"There is a room for that. I'll show you. But, you have to get me out of here first."

"Of course," Tommy said. Even Rocky didn't deserve to be treated like this, like some kind of zoo animal.

But, how was he gonna get him out of there? They were both locked in, and there was no chance anyone come in with the walked around Rocky, observing the chains. They were the thickest chains he had ever seen, each link as a big as a fist, but he knew how to get rid of them. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Alright Rocky, can you keep a secret?" Tommy asked.

"Sure. Why not?" Rocky said, stoned faced.

Tommy pulled his morpher out of his pocket. "Tigerzord!" he yelled, and in a whiteflash, he stood before Rocky as the White Ranger.

"Tada," Tommy said, "I'm a Power Ranger, and guess what? Jason is too."

"Huh, whatever," Rocky mumbled.

Tommy sighed. He reached up and grabbed the chain holding up Rocky's left arm. "Okay, three, two, one." Tommy pulled on the chain as hard as he could, bending his knees so he could as close the ground as the ground as flexed his massive arm downward. They pulled and pulled until the chain was tight and quaking with tension.

 _Snap!_ The chain hook and a chunl of the ceiling came crashing down to the ground. Rocky snapped off the his leash with his free hand, and they repeated the process to free his right arm.

Rocky rubbed his wrists. "Thanks. I think there's a vent up here we can use."

Tommy readied himself. "Alright man, I'll give you a—"

Rocky clung to the wall and crawled his way to the ceiling.

"—boost. . ."

Tommy demorphed, then something strange caught the corner of his eye. He headed to the window and peered through the bars. The blue sky hanged over head with the usual collection of puffy clouds, but something else was there too, a weird shape that didn't belong. . .

 _The eye, the distortion, the Dark Specter,_ foggy in the distance, but can clearly be seen from the naked eye. He stared into it as it stared into him. It was coming, and Tommy needed to get to the other rangers as soon as possible.

The vent grate clanged onto the floor.

"Come on! Let's get out of here," Rocky said, hanging from the ceiling.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me twice."

* * *

Tommy plopped down onto the tile floor. Around him, a bunch of cardboard boxes and stacks of clothes laid sloppily on metal shelves. He took one step forward.

His face almost plummeted to the ground, if it weren't' for him grabbing the the shelf at the last second. Of course, the shelf almost fell over. He gripped and tugged it back toward him before it fell away, only a few small boxes fell to the floor.

"You're a superhero?" Rocky said from up in the vent.

"Shut up!" Tommy said. _What happened?_ he thought as he looked down at floor. Junk, the floor was littered with everything little thing a person might keep on them, cell phones, watches, necklaces, lipstick, pens, and a couple of toy cars that may of been what he actually slipped on. Most of the stuff was also busted and in pieces.

"What's with this?" Tommy said.

"You come in. They take away everything you were," Rocky said.

"Wow," Tommy said, "how am I gonna find what I'm looking for?"

Rocky jumped down to the floor. "Kyle knows."

"Who is. . ." Tommy's train of thought was derailed. Really obnoxious sounding guitar music started rumbling through the room. No rhythm whatsoever, just a series of random crashing notes getting louder and louder in the room.

They followed the sound to a little office in the side of the room. Feet splayed out on the desk, a bug leaned in a chair and thumbed a gameboy, while rocking out to the loud music playing on a boombox.

"I don't need nobody! I don't need NOBODY!" the bug wailed as they sneaked behind him. Rocky reached over and crushed the gameboy like it was a soda can.

The bug spun around to face them. Every inch of his crystal mouth was embedded with rings and piercings "Hey man, I stole that fair and sq—oh, hey Rocky! What, uh, what are doing out?" he said with a slurred speech and uneasy smile.

"Hey Kyle." Rocky grabbed the chair slung it to the other wall. Bouncing forward, Kyle almost fell out of the chair before Rocky snatched his neck and threw him back to the wall.

"Now that we have your attention," Tommy said, "can you help us find a watch with a microphone for a clock?"

"I ain't seen nothin' like that," Kyle said.

"Are you sure? It must of come threw here this morning," Tommy said. He lifted the boombox off the table and held it over the floor. Kyle's beady black eyes lit up with fear. "Maybe, you just need reminder," Tommy said as he released his hands.

"Wait!"

In a split second, Tommy caught it again.

"Fine, fine," Kyle said with a growl, "It should be on the third rack of the shelf by the door."

"Thank you." Tommy put the boombox back on the desk. "Rocky, could you go grab that for me?"

Rocky looked back at him, puzzled.

Tommy nodded, and then Rocky went up to get it with a scowl.

With the best fake smile he could make, Tommy sat down on the desk and casually leaned in toward Kyle. It felt weird to have to play this part, but Tommy had seen Jason do it so many times that it couldn't be that hard.

"Listen pal, you and I both know that the big shots here are planning something huge for the city. I heard they were talking something about a revolution. You wouldn't happen to know anything about it? Do ya?"

Kyle curled his crystal lip at Tommy. "Man, I don't know nothin'. I'm just here for the free stuff."

"Oh, well. . ." _Crap, I don't know what to say next,_ Tommy thought.

"Uh,uh," Tommy stammered, "why Do the guys up there not think you're important enough to be apart of there special little meetings?"

"Pfffftttt, those bozos wish they had me helping them out. I have so many good ideas on how to take out the humans," Kyle leaned back and crossed his arms, "but I guess playing some _Killstorm_ at eleven amps until the humans gave up was 'Too stupid for words.'"

 _Alright, we might be getting somewhere._ "So, they shoved you down here then, huh? Maybe you can help us do something that'll make those bozos go away? Maybe then you can call the shots?" Tommy said.

Kyle rubbed his claw in and out of his lip ring. "Well, they also told me that told anybody anything that would snap arms off and shove them down my throat, so. . . yeah."

"Well, uh. . ." _How the hell does Jason do this?_ Tommy thought.

Rocky came back in with the communicator in hand. "Is this it?"

"Yes," Tommy said as he snatched it. His fingers down the silver and gold band and over the copper speaker. _Please, please work._ He flipped it over and pressed down hard onto the red button on the back.

Nothing.

"What's wrong?" Rocky asked.

Tommy sighed, and leaned over to whisper into Rocky's ear. "I can't teleport us out of here. I think the communicators need to be resynched with the teleportation grid, but I have no idea how to do that."

"So. what now?"

Tommy pulled Rocky in closer, their backs facing Kyle to block him from seeing anything. Pinching in buttons on both sides of it's speaker, he activated the tracker. A blue halo projected out from the watch. Multi-colored dots materialized in the halo, separated by blue lines intersecting into a grid.

"I should be find where the E.S.B are keeping the others," Tommy whispered.

"Can't they also find us then?" Rocky asked.

"They would've been here by now," Tommy said,"I think they're all morphed, which would make the tracker untouchable to anybody besides them."

"Okay, but how do we get out?"

"Ha!" Kyle laughed from behind them. "This place crawling with trigger happy bugs! You two have no chance of getting out of here! No way Jose!"

Tommy sat back down on the desk. "Really? Are there is not a single way for us to get out of here? You have to know something?"

Kyle violently shook his head from side to side. " I ain't tellin' yous nothin', cuz I know nothin'!"

"Oh, I believe you," Tommy said as he placed a hand on Kyle's shoulder, "but I don't think my partner here does at all." He winked at Rocky.

Rocky winked his black eye back.

"But hey, maybe you can convince him." Tommy turned his head over. "Rocky, would you mind handling this for a little while?"

"Sure," Rocky said.

This was great. Kyle was already shaking as Rocky approached him. If there was anybody who was gonna make this guy talk, it would be Rocky. All he would probably have to do is just poke Kyle and the guy would cry louder than—

Sparks flew as the boombox came down and smashed against Kyle's skull. Rocky lifted the boombox back up and smashed it again one more time as Kyle let out an agonising howl.

"Hey, stop!" Tommy yelled, but it was too late. Rocky had already thrown Kyle from the chair. Screaming, Kyle flew onto a shelf, knocking it to the ground which then knocked over another shelf on top of him.

Rocky ran over and bent down to grab the shelf. His muscles quaked as he slowly began lifting the shelf over his head while a growling hiss escaped his mouth. From over his head, Rocky tossed the shelf aside and grabbed Kyle.

"Please," Kyle spat out.

Tommy ran over, but not before Rocky started bashing Kyle's head into the tile floor over and over and over again, cracking the crystal encasing his head. Rocky grinned as he pressed his claw down onto Kyle's face, smooshing deeper into the little crater he made. Kyle gasped desperately for air.

"Enough!" Tommy yelled as he tried to pull Rocky off of him.

"Alright! Alright!" Kyle begged. "Zane got wind of a E.S.B sweep downtown coming this afternoon. He and his boys are gonna try to blow them away and rescue some bugs. You can try to leave with them if you want. Just please stop! I won't tell nobody!"

"Good," Rocky said as he walked away from Kyle's shivering body. Rocky cracked his neck toward Tommy. "Nice teamwork," he said as he walked by.

Tommy was gaped and dazed. Not just by what happened, but also by the fact that as Rocky walked him, Tommy caught a glimpse of a new shard of crystal growing and pulsating on the good side of Rocky's face.

* * *

All around the garage, bugs armed themselves with long range Martian plasma blasters Some bugs carried up to five bandoleers of Triforian sonic grenades over their shoulders. Tommy even saw one bug brandishing a Horathian laser-knife. It sucked, no, it blew that all this hi-tech weaponry was on the street for maybe years without the Power Rangers noticing, and now they were in the claws of crazed lunatics and sick people.

Tommy pulled and tugged at his collar. This leather jumpsuit they gave was really uncomfortable, but at least he blended in with as the bugs as best he could. He did see a couple of people walk by that weren't completely mutated yet, and hopefully that meant that no one was gonna notice him being here.

He grabbed a helmet and a blaster, and he kept his head down as he walked in line with others to the back of the armored truck they had setup. He trundled along, trying to bring attention to himself.

A claw pushed onto his shoulder, stopping him dead.

Tommy gulped. It was Zane, and he stared at him through his shades as his pinchers disgustingly chomped up some pink bubble gum.

"We don't usually allow level one members on these raids," Zane said.

Eyes darting, Tommy tried to think of something to say. Something that Zane could relate to, and then it came to him. He starting twitching his left eye and griding his teeth together.

"But I gots to, man! I wanna see them pigs bleed! No! I wanna see 'em burn up! Burn in the flames of revolution! Burn! Burn!"

Zane laughed as warmly as the creep ever possibly could. "Alright brother, I'll see out you there." He slapped Tommy's back as he passed by him.

Quickly, Tommy ran into the truck and sat on the bench. His hands wrung together as more bugs loaded onto the truck. They were cutting it close on this one, having to play along with these guys until they got to wherever they were going, then soon as they could.

But Tommy had no idea where Rocky was, or how he was going to be able to slip past Zane and the others, and the truck was almost ready to go. _Where is that weirdo?_ Tommy thought. _Where is—_

"Psst."

Tommy looked up, and a bug sat down next to him on the bench. Under the bug's helmet, Tommy could see the left side of his face was wrapped up with bandages, exposing only a half a bug face.

He recognized him. "Roc—"

"Shoosh," Rocky said.

"Sorry," Tommy whispered.

The engine started, and the truck rumbled off onto the road, dying sunlight seeping in through the windows. All the bugs began to whisper among themselves. Rocky leaned closer to Tommy's ear.

"They're not that bright anymore. If we stay away from Zane, we should be good," Rocky whispered.

"What did you do about Kyle?" Tommy whispered back.

"He's not gonna be a problem."

"What does that mean?" Tommy almost shouted by accident, gaining the attention of a couple of bugs for a split second.

"He's just tied up in the vent. Relax. Trust me, nobody is gonna care enough to look for him, or me for at least the rest of the day," Rocky said.

"The dude was a cow, you didn't have to do all that to him," Tommy said.

"He's strong enough now. He'll get over it."

"What you did was insane and just wrong," Tommy said, and he meant it too. Seeing the utter glee Rocky had on his face while he was pummeling Kyle just twist Tommy's insides, and it reminded him way to much of the way he beated on that kid back in the pyramid not to long ago.

 _Did I look like that too?_

"Whatever," Rocky said.

"Listen," Tommy said, "I'll help you out, but I'm not Jason. I'm not gonna put up with your edgy, emo B.S."

Rocky stared off into the empty space above him. "Cool," he said.

They rode along in silence for a moment.

"Where is Jay anyway?" Rocky said.

Tommy sighed. "Oh, you care now, huh?"

Rocky just stared back Tommy. He couldn't read anything from his black, bug eye. Just emptiness in there. Tommy rubbed out an ache in his neck. "Well for your information, he went MIA even before our base got attacked, not long after trying to help you."

Rocky turned his head back up to the ceiling. "Huh."

"Yeah," Tommy said.

"That blows," Rocky said.

"Yeah, yeah it does."

The truck rumbled along, breaking up the silence that consumed the area. Tommy still wrung his hands together as he looked at all the bugs surrounding him. They were just sitting there, waiting. They weren't waiting to jump Tommy, probably. But still, having them be all around in the endless silence was going to drive him crazy.

"So, is Jay always like that?" Rocky said.

The sudden break in silence shocked Tommy, but he was not gonna let a possible conversation pass by. "What do you mean?" Tommy asked.

"Just, the complete lack of subtlety, and the out of nowhere preaching," Rocky said.

"Oh yeah, he never shuts that off. I don't think he can," Tommy said.

"One time, Rocky said. "I didn't show up to math class, and then the next day at lunch, Jay starting talking on and on about how it's wrong to skip class, and I should believe in myself more, and that I could get an A in the class if I worked hard enough, and how I shouldn't drop out of school, and. . .and I told him that I didn't show up to class that day because I was coming off a bad cold."

Tommy tried to keep his laughter under control, to avoid gaining attention. "Yeah, he can be really annoying like that. I remember this one time he setup an intervention for this kid that he swore was doing drugs, because this kid was dazed and sleepy all the time.. He got the kid's family together in the living room and everything, but it just turned out this kid was just sleepy from staying up all night playing video games."

Something happened that amazed Tommy after he told his story. For a brief second, if you blinked you would've missed it, a warm smile came across Rocky's face before vanishing.

* * *

The fireball engulfed everything. It's vibrations rumbled through the quaking earth. The heat almost melted Tommy's face. The smoke made his eye water a little bit as he stumbled through the black cloud.

Eyes peeled,he stepped lightly through the chaos and the rubble. Someone's laugh echoed in the background, but Tommy didn't from what direction. His ankle popped slightly out of place as whatever he stepped slipped beneath his foot.

Staggering back, Tommy tried to find what in the world he stepped on. Laying on the road, Tommy's own head was staring back up at him. It was the head of the White Ranger statue from the dedication fountain, laying there, cracked and in pieces.

The smoke cleared, and finally Tommy could see what was left of the fountain. Water leaked out of the jagged edges of the demolished pool. Two pairs of severed ranger legs stood alone on the top of it.

He thought of a lot things, and yet, he couldn't think of anything at all.

"Let's move out!" a bug called out over the distance.

Tommy followed the voice and he managed to find all the bugs marching together Slipping in among them, he and the others marched down mainstreet all the way to the end, coming up onto that moss covered house that always for sale.

 _Did Rocky bail on me or what?_ Tommy thought. He lost sight of Rocky after they left the truck, and he seemed to completely disappear after the bugs blew up the fountain.

Up ahead, a black van with a yellow E.S.B logo laid on the lawn. Tommy grinded his together. _They're here. Rocky better show up fast before Zane turns this place into a crater,_ he thought.

They all swarmed around the van, and two bugs shoved their fists through the backdoors like they were paper. They reached their arms deep into the tears they made and yanked and tugged at the doors until they snapped off of their hinges.

Guns high in the air, the bugs all gave a small little victory cry. Quickly, Tommy tried to mimic them with a half-hearted "hurrah" and barely lifting his blaster over his chin.

Zane passed by Tommy and approached the van. Through the sea of bug heads, Tommy could make out Zane helping somebody out of the van, maybe it was an old man with no hair? No. He had long white hair on the left side, but no hair on the other side, just jagged crystal spikes protruding from his head.

That wasn't it, though. Zane stepped in and reached deep inside the vehicle. Tommy was pretty sure he heard him say: "It's okay, it's all over now," in what was probably the softest, yet creepiest tone of voice Zane had ever used. Zane came out holding a little blonde boy, who couldn't be any older than six, high over his head like he was playing with him.

"What's goin' on?" the kid asked, tears rolling down his face.

Zane pulled the kid down closer to his face. "I'm gonna take you home, where our family is gonna take care of you, and you are gonna take care of us," he said with a grin.

 _That's it, I'm out of here,_ Tommy thought as tried walking backwards away from the crowd, but the bugs just pushed pulled forward as they all ran toward the house.

He was flung to the wall. All around Tommy, the bugs started crawling up the walls of the house, pieces of wood and vegetation falling to the earth with every step.

"Hey rookie!" Zane called as he walked up to Tommy with a metal baseball bat in hand. He placed his free hand on the dirty window. "This is how it's done."

 _Smash!_

Zane shattered the window before jumping through it. Inside, Zane swung wildly at a couple of agents, knocking a few right in the head. One managed to block a swing with a huge metal box they were carrying, but the box just sparked right the man's face.

"Come on," Zane shouted at Tommy, "don't be shy! Burn 'em up!"

Crap, there was no turning back now. Tommy stepped into began firing his blaster wildly into the air, while making sure that every shot wouldn't hit anything at all.

That didn't stop a bald agent the size of a brick house from coming at him. He stretched his arms out around Tommy and wrapped him up tight. Tommy tried to wiggle his way out the man's python grip. He squeezed him so tight that Tommy could feel the air being pushed out of his lungs.

One hit with Zane's bat, and the giant was down.

Trying to catch his breath, Tommy bent down onto his knees and frantically rubbed his chest. Zane came by pulled Tommy back up again, hugging his side.

"I guess the pig didn't know what hit him!" Zane laughed as he threw the bent baseball bat on the floor next to the agent.

Tommy winced as he gazed down at the unconscious agent's bleeding head. _Sorry, pal._ He never felt this bad for a faceless E.S.B agent like this before in his life.

The bugs all gathered together into the living room they were in and started piling the agents bodies on top of one another. Zane stood there with his claws on his hips and admired the pile like it was a piece of art, then he actually noticed the group of tied up people they were there to rescue.

There was around twenty people, all of different ages, shapes and sizes, all halfway through their mutation, all bound together with metal cable. Tommy figured this house must of been where a few different families decided to hide after the E.S.B took over.

"Rejoice my brothers!" Zane shouted. "Your liberation is at hand!"

The people just shivered and crawled away as the bugs came over to them.

Zane pointed his finger at Tommy "Rookie! Scope around for any stragglers."

Tommy nodded, and he hoped that this would be his opportunity to make a break for it, but no. Two more bugs followed Tommy upstairs to check out the rest of the house.

* * *

The house spelt of mothballs and rotting leaves, and it seemed each sound made was amplified up to eleven and echoed throughout the house. Tommy wondered how the bugs behind him didn't just fall through the uncarpeted floors, as they just stomped through.

Tommy stuck his head into what was probably a bedroom. Nothing there but a window and a drawer.

He opened a door to find toilet-less bathroom, and that was about it.

The bugs stumbled by six feet behind him, taking way too much time to scan their heads over every square inch of the house. Maybe, it would be easy enough to just jump through a window and make a break for it. Nah. too risky.

Tommy eyed a door that was small enough to be just a hallway closet, and to continue playing the part, he opened it, pretended to look, then shut it again. . . _wait._

He opened door again and found two big, innocent eyes staring back at him. The eyes of a pouty little girl with a messy bob cut. She scratched hard at her arms as little shards of crystal grew out of them.

"What's. . ." she managed to say with a gap in her teeth.

"Shoosh!" Tommy said as he closed the door on her.

 _No. No more kids._

He ran back to the bugs. "Hey boys, I think I heard something in the bathroom!"

The bugs looked at each other, then lumbered off to the bathroom. As soon as their backs were turned, Tommy ran back to the closet, grabbed her, and ran across them to get to that bedroom.

He placed the kid down for a second, and looked out the window. It was probably fifthteen above the grass. Frantically, Tommy scratch his head about how he was gonna do this, then it came to him.

He ran over to the drawer, pulled it out, and dumped the contents on the floor. A leather belt stood out to him and he grabbed it.

Kneeling over her, he said: "Hey kid, you know those shiny things on your arms? Do you have them on your legs too?"

With distress in her eyes, she nodded. Her poked out of her foot pink nightgown, exposing the crystal starting to encase her entire foot.

Tommy wrapped the belt around his arm. "Great, now I'm gonna lower down as I can, then your gonna jump, and your gonna be strong enough now to land safely and run away."

"I dunno. That's scary," she said.

He heard bathroom door creaked open.

"Oh trust me, that's nothing." Tommy picked her up and set her up by the window, wrapped some of the belt around her arm.

The floor creaked as the bugs lumpered toward the room.

"Now!" Tommy said as he put her through the window.

"Eh, eh, eh," she muttered as she climbed down the wall, carefully, if precariously placing her feet on the siding.

Tommy slowly unwrapped the belt from his arm, keeping an on her descent. "Come on kid! You can do it!"

"Hey, what's the big idea!" one of the bugs slurred as they stumbled closer. to the room.

And then Tommy ran out of belt. "Alright kid, now your gonna have to jump!"

Eyes clenched shut, her head hiding close to her arms, she said: "I can't! it's too far!"

The floor creaked. He looked back. The bugs turned the corner lead that straight to the room. He snapped back to the window.

"Jump!"

It all happened so fast. She descended to the bugs peered into the room. Tommy shut the window and faced them.

"Oh, uh, hey boys! Did you find anything?" Tommy said as sweat poured down his face. He tried to look at them in the eyes, but he couldn't help but glance down to see the kid run off.

One bug tilted their head to the side. "What are you try—"

A high-pitched hiss ascended from downstairs. The two bugs mimicked it and ran for the door, Tommy followed them down the stairs.

Before he could even make out what was going in the smoke below, the staircase gave away, and Tommy flopped down onto the bottom floor.

 _Boom!_

Little splinters of wood flew over Tommy's head. He looked up; three pairs of headlights shone through the dust. Red energy blasts flew from out that direction, obliterating the walls, and sending chunks of drywall into the air.

He crawl across the floor, trying to keep low under the energy blasts that soared through the air from both sides. White noise flooded around Tommy, the high-pitched _zip_ of the energy blasts, the squeals of the bugs, the booming crashes of the sonic grenades, all pounding into his eardrums as he crawled.

In the flashes of light, he could get a brief glimpse of the action. Some kind of task force was sweeping in the house. Bugs would charge at them, only to be shot down to the ground, occasionally making for something to crawl over as he avoided fire.

He reached out on the ground until his fingers were met with shards of glass. A way out? Maybe? Tommy got onto on his knees and elbows and bared through the glass carefully, baring through the cuts, baring through the pain.

 _Stupid, why am I so stupid._

He rolled over, feeling grass touch his back. Reaching into every pocket this jumpsuit had, he wondered why the hell he didn't try morphing earlier? His fingers finally touched it's silver surface—

Screaming, Zane ran over to Tommy, covering his leaking face with his claws. He squirmed and wiggled in a dance of agony.

His screams were cut short as an armored truck bashed into him, sucking him underneath it.

The truck's door flew open. From out of the dark, Tommy saw Rocky's face appear from the truck.

"Get in!" Rocky yelled.

Without hesitation, Tommy climbed into the truck. Rocky started the engine before Tommy could even get both of his feet in the cab. Tommy was flung into the seat. Rocky spun off into road, smashing everything in his path, and laughing the whole way.

* * *

Tommy tried to rub away the pain that stabbed straight through his brain, which wasn't easy with him trying to read the tracker, and not to mention the truck bouncing up and down over and over again, making the pain stab a little more deeper with every bump.

None of that seemed to bother Rocky at all. He just continued to stare blankly into the night as they drove on into desert. It was nothing happened at all, just a normal day. Like, he didn't just screw Tommy over at all.

"How much further?" Rocky asked casually.

Tommy looked down at the tracker, and the white dot on the holographic grid seemed to be getting relatively close to the blue, yellow and pink dots, but Tommy never really learned how to read this thing. They could fifteen miles away? Thirty? Thirty-fiv— _Oh, screw it!_

Tommy threw the communicator to the floor. "What the hell happened back there?!"

Rocky slid his eyes over to Tommy for only one second. "What?"

"What do you think I mean? I wanna know what happened to the plan. I wanna know why you left me in that warzone!"

"Pardon me If I thought a Power Ranger could take care himself. Besides, I came up with a better a plan," Rocky said.

The truck picked up a little more speed through the desert.

"Oh, thank so much for believing in me Rocky. It means a lot," Tommy said. "Enlighten me, what was your brilliant plan that almost got me killed?"

"Well instead of just leaving, it would better if I took one of Zane's trucks for a joyride, got the men in black's attention, then bring them to Zane so they could kill each other. Two birds, one stone."

"Why didn't you tell me first?" Tommy asked.

"Because you would've said 'No.'"

 _Asinine! Asinine! Asinine!_ Tommy slammed fist on the dashboard. "Yeah, I would've because that idea was stupid!"

The engine roared as Rocky hit the gas.

"At least it was an me, what exactly is your plan when we get to wherever we're going? Are you just gonna knock on the door and ask the government to let your friends out?" Rocky said.

Heat radiated out of Tommy's face. How dare this creep even compare them? "There were civilians in that house, you know? Not only could you've killed just me, but them in the crossfire."

Rocky just stared off at the desert.

"But hey! Whatever, am I right?" Tommy said. "As long as Zane pays for what he did to you, that's all that really matters."

"Yes!"

The terrain whooshed by them at infinite velocity.

Rocky turned to him, showing off the large mass of crystal growing, pulsating and consuming his left cheek. "I hope he suffers! Burns! I hope all of those freaks burn!"

Tommy covered his face as shards of glass rained over him. The cab went on its side as Rocky was sucked out of the window.

* * *

Rocky's skull smashed into the ground as he tumbled. Something was with him, wrapped around him, holding him. The night sky wiped past his eyes as he flipped over onto his back.

Everything swirled and shifted in front of his eyes. There was no sense of anything. All feeling was blocked by vibrations going through his body. It was like there was nothing around him, just blackness, just a void.

Slowly, a pressure began to form around his neck, cutting into his crystal hyde. A shape moved in front of him, moved closer to him. The sound of laughter creeped in.

"Hey, thanks for the lift," Zane said, blue blood dripping out of cracks in his forehead. He reached behind his back, and a long machete blade slid from out his jacket. "Would you mind holding still while I cut your face off?"

With a growl, Rocky thrusted him off, sending Zane tumbling into the dirt. Rocky got himself back on his feet, and rubbed at the stinging pain in his neck. A warm sensation touched his fingers. He looked at them.

Blood.

"I guess somethings really don't change that much," Zane said as he pulled himself back up, "you were a traitor back then, and you're a traitor now."

"Oh, just shut up!"

"Come on Rock, don't you feel it? Don't you feel it in your blood." Zane pounded his machete against his chest. "It's pumpin' through your veins right now. It's callin' for you Rock, the Dark Specter. Why resist?"

Rocky winced. The crystal was cutting and shearing at his face. He picked and clawed at his cheek, but it was like chipping at a stone.

Zane inched toward him, one step at a time. "You know it's pointless, just look at the sky. Just embrace it! The Dark Specter will sweep through and we'll be free. We will be the ones to carry on, to bring in a new era in the grand evolution of the cosmos."

"Do you really believe that?" Rocky said.

"Nope. I'm just here for a good time." Zane swung at him.

In a second, Rocky blocked, and the machete was lodged into his forearm. Zane struggled to pull it out, but it was wedged to deep in Rocky's thick hyde. Smiling, Rocky snapped the blade in half with his free claw.

Zane lunged at him, but Rocky charged forward with all his might, making them fly three feet.

They crash landed in the sand. Rocky pressed his claws deep into Zane's face. Eyes crazed, Rocky searched for something to use. He picked up a nearby rock and bashed into Zane's face over and over again until the rock disintegrated.

Zane hissed as Rocky's claws tore into his face.

* * *

"Tigerzord!"

The energy blast from the morph ripped the truck door from off its hinges. Tommy tumbled out of the smoking vehicle. Before he could even wonder about what happened, he spotted Rocky struggling with someone in the distance.

He rushed over there as fast as he possibly could. With each step he got a better picture of what was going on, and how terrible things really were.

Rocky was there, sitting, growling, smiling, baring his claws into Zane's crackling neck. Zane laid there, gurgling, eyes twitching, barely conscious.

"Rocky, stop!" He's had enough!" Tommy yelled.

"Stay out of my way," Rocky said, his voice crackling into something unrecognizable.

Tommy unholstered his blaster. "Don't make me do it!"

Rocky gnarled his teeth at Tommy. Zane convulsed in pain. Tommy fired at Rocky

He was flung a foot away from them, and Tommy ran over to Zane for a moment. The creep coughed, good enough. Tommy rushed over to Rocky.

Crawling back to his feet, dusting the soot off of him, Rocky glared at Tommy. "Why? Why do you help him?" he grunted.

Tommy could see the crystal on Rocky's good side etching its way to his eye socket. He had to think of something fast. "Him? I don't care about him. I'm looking out for you. Look at yourself, man! You're not yourself!"

"Says who? Because I thought I was a creep," Rocky said.

Tommy sighed. _Oh, you heard that, huh?_

"Listen," Tommy said, "if l let you finish this, there's no going back for you. Just stand back!"

"I'm tired of people deciding what's best for me," Rocky said as he lumbered toward him.

"Rocky!"

He lunged at Tommy, and swatted the blaster away before he could even used. His claws enclosed around Tommy's neck, and flung him into the air.

Tommy barely landed on his feet before hopping back from Rocky's slashes. He hopped and swerved as Rocky slashed his claws at him, each hop just an inch away from doom.

Rocky thrusted and tore his claws across Tommy's chestplate, sparking and shearing the metal.

Tommy wailed as he felt the sparks burn his skin.

Rocky dug his claws deep into the ranger helmet, leaving only two inches between the claw and Tommy's face. The heat from the sparks made Tommy's eyes water as Rocky peeled the face off the helmet.

Before Tommy could even do anything, Rocky dug into his shoulders and forced him on his knees. He had to drop. It was like trying to fight gravity itself. Wedging his claws into it, Rocky tore off the back of Tommy's helmet.

The world was spinning. Tommy could feel Rocky's hot breath over his shoulder. His head rung as Rocky knocked it into the dirt. _No, not now. . ._

Howling and screeching in pain, Rocky dashed away from Tommy.

 _What th—_ Tommy weakly lifted his head back up. In the distance, Rocky hissed and wailed as energy blasts fired at him from behind Tommy. Rocky swung blindly as they kept coming at him.

Something small was flung onto the ground. Tommy could barely make out what it was. It's metal casing glinted in the nightlight, a red light blinked rapidly on it, and it beeped incessantly. _Oh no. . ._

 _Flash!_

* * *

Claustrophobia set in. Tommy was completely boxed in this little grey room, handcuffed to the table, and uncomfortably close to guy who almost ripped his face off. Gazing into the mirror on the wall was the only escape from that cramped, closed off feeling. The E.S.B had to be watching Tommy from the other side. What were they thinking? What were they planning?

Rocky slumped in the chair he was chained to, sleeping with his eyes wide open. He didn't shift or squirm at all. In fact, It was hard to tell if he was even breathing. Stiff as a statue, he stood there, staring down at his feet.

The metal door swung open, and from the dark hallway, Walker materialized with a clipboard in hand. "Thomas Oliver," he said, "sixteen years old, adoptive son of Joseph and Caitlyn Oliver, and currently attending Angel Grove High School. Now I admit, that is not who I was expect to under that helmet."

"Yeah, It's a little embarrassing knowing it was a kid who was picking up your slack over and over again, isn't it?"

Walker grimaced.

"Does that clipboard mention that I'm not very good at math, because that makes it worse," Tommy said.

"Ha," Walker said, reaching into his suit jacket. He pulled out a little remote and pointed at the mirror. "Ha." And with a click, the mirror went to static like a T.V. In a second, the static switched to a three way split screen. On each screen, the Blue, Yellow, and Pink Rangers wriggled and twisted their limbs as they tried to pull out of the huge cuffs attached to cell floors and walls. Cracks ran along almost square every inch of their armor.

"Ha."

Tommy jumped to his feet, only for his handcuffs to bring him back down. He grinded his teeth together and slammed his hands down on the metal table. "What did you do to them?!"

"Well, we learned that whatever material your armor is made of must be one of the most impenetrable substances in the known universe, could be very useful to us," Walker said.

"This is crazy," Tommy said.

"Crazy? I myself would call withholding an interdimensional device from the people of earth when they're in the middle a crisis crazy," Walker said.

"You don't know what the key is capable of."

Walker bent forward over the table, up close to Tommy. His face was so close that Tommy could feel his breath on his, but all he could see in Walker's shades was his own reflection. "I don't," Walker whispered, "reverse engineering it to make some mutant scanners was only scratching the surface of its abilities, but I do know this. If you don't give me the names of your team members, the current locations of the Red and Black Rangers, and information on how your morphing technology works, then I will do whatever is necessary to scrape that armor off of them."

"Try," Tommy said.

Walker adjusted his tie, and slid down table. He sat down casually across from Rocky. "Of course, I would be perfectly willing to give special accommodations, amnesty even, to any mutant with information vital to earth's security."

 _Oh, crap. Rocky knows who Jason and I hang out with,_ Tommy thought. His eyes shot over to Rocky, still uneasily swallowed a lump of air in his throat

"Huh?" Walker said.

Slowly, Rocky lifted his up to face Walker, and he shot a load of saliva out of his mouth.

"Dah!" Walker yelled as he tried to wipe the thick blue gunk from his shades. "Have it your way!" he said as he slammed the door behind him.

Tommy sat there for a moment, stunned. _Why didn't?_ He turned over to Rocky, who returned to his original statue position.

"Thanks?" Tommy said.

Screaming and hollering, Rocky shook violently in chair, banging it against the floor and rattling his chains. "Why did you stop me?! Why couldn't you just let me end him?!"

Tommy rubbed his forehead with his palm. "Really, man? We're doing this again? You know what the answer is."

"It was between me and him. It had nothing to do with you."

"So, you tried to kill me instead," Tommy said.

Rocky finally gave up escaping and slammed his feet onto the ground. "I wasn't going to kill you."

"Oh, you just wanted me to fear for my life then! Great! I feel so much better now, thanks man! You know what? I gotta say, mutation or no mutation, you really suck!" Tommy said.

"You don't know anything about me, or what i've been through."

"Man, are you kidding me?" Tommy said, "I had you pegged the moment I first saw you. Hell, I was you. Let me guess, mommy and daddy didn't love you that much? Huh? So you just went out and did whatever you want, because who cares? Right? Everyone around you would rather just spit on you than look at you. Might as well spit back. It's not like there's else anything you can do. Right? Is any of this ringing a bell?"

Rocky just returned his gaze to the floor.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Tommy said, "life sucks. Guess whose fault it is?"

Rocky squirmed a little bit in his chair. He cleared his throat. "My parents are gone," he said.

"Yeah." Tommy raised an eyebrow.

"We were moving from Stone Canyon to Angel Grove, and then this car got came out of nowhere, and just. . . I don't really remember I was like six or something. I moved around after that from here to there, to here, to there—"

 _Same old story,_ Tommy thought, _you still suck._

"—then I met Zane," Rocky said,"I thought he was so cool. He did whatever he wanted, and didn't let anybody get in his way. We got a little group together and we taught ourselves how to fight, how to get a few bucks, how to party. . .how to take."

"Yeah, and?"

"We learned pretty quickly that Zane was not like the rest of us. He had just this way of getting in your head, you know? He'd say it, and we'd just do it. We had to do it. It felt wrong if we didn't. He made us feel wrong if we didn't. It was like we were his dogs, or something," Rocky said.

"And if you didn't do what he told you?"

"We were treated like dogs," Rocky said.

"Huh. . ."

"One day," Rocky said, "Zane wanted us to torch down this antique shop. He said it was a symbol of our liberation from the monetary system that was keeping us down, or something. He could've said anything, and we would've bought it. We're setting up to do it, and I noticed that there was this family living above the shop. Two parents, their girl, and an old man. Zane didn't tell us anything about them. He just wanted to place gone. At that point, I thought things were just getting too weird, and I sold him out to the cops and ran.

"He didn't leave me alone after that, even when he was locked up. I couldn't sleep at night. I thought about him almost every second of everyday. And when he got out, he made sure that I knew he was back. He sent all of his cronies after me. Everyday I had to run, I had to hide. One time, to curl up in an alley, and just hope didn't find me. After that, I jus—I just couldn't take it anymore. . . Do you know what it feels like. . ."

"Feels like, what?" Tommy asked.

". . . what it feels like to not be in control of your own life," Rocky said.

Tommy wrung his hands together. "Yeah, I can imagine that pretty well. And, when you think it's over, you'll promise to yourself that you'll do anything to not feel that again. . ."

Walker busted through the door and slammed a black suitcase on the table. "Alright gentlemen, since you refuse to play the easy—"

Red lights flashed all over the room, sirens blared, the mirror displayed a flashing message reading: _Emergency: Intruder Alert._

Walker whipped out a walkie-talkie. "What the hell is going on out there?"

The talkie staticed before a voice came on. "Sir, it's the mutants, they're—" A large crashing sound came out of the talkie, then static.

Walker pulled out his remote and then switched the mirror over to some grainy footage.

Tommy widened his eyes at the footage. A smoking hallway cleared to show an armour truck stalking down the hall followed by a swarm of bugs. Peering closer, Tommy noticed the little cell doors on the walls were opening by bugs didn't have to do anything at all, they just walked out.

Walker's jaw dropped at the sight of it. "But, how—"

Another agent came in through the door. Walker turned to face him. "Shaw? What's happening?"

Shaw raised a gun. "The Dark Age."

One shot, and Walker was down.

Shaw turned to the open doorway. "Clear," he said.

And waltzing in like it was nothing at all, Forrester came into the room. His eyes scanned every inch of the place. They rested on the screen for a moment, admiring the destruction. Then, he turned his attention to them. "Bring them along. They need to bare witness to this."

* * *

The chains cut into Tommy's arms, and probably his circulation too. Rocky was also chained to a hand truck-thing, and he tried shaking himself out of it earlier, but gave up once he realized all that would happen is he would fall on the floor and not be able to get up.

One fluorescent light shined over head, reflecting off a couple of bugs as they eteched the eye into the quartz floor. Darkness laid beyond the light, and all Tommy could make out was a few shapes. If he had to guess, It would have to be a row of cell doors, all of them open. Above, a catwalk was suspended, all the doors up there seemed to be opened there too. Tommy took a deep breath, or the deepest he could with the chains. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.

A couple of figures moved through the darkness, only Forrester came into the light. "So, this is what you use exude power others," he said, waving the morpher around, Tommy's communicator wrapped around it.

Rocky coughed and convulsed. A couple of bugs came to make sure he wouldn't fall over. With each cough, Tommy saw a couple of pinchers crawl out of Rocky's throat.

Forrester passed by Rocky like he wasn't there at all. He just slowly approached Tommy. "Fascinating piece of technology, really. I can see why the E.S.B wanted to study it so badly. They craved it. They tried so hard to dismantle it, but nothing took. Every drill, every saw they used just melted in its presence."

Leaning in, Forrester put his foot on Tommy's chair. "And you know what the best part is, White Ranger?"

Tommy tried to form a quip. He opened his mouth—

"The best part is," Forrester said, waving the morpher right in Tommy's face, "this piece of highly advanced extraterrestrial technology is of no importance to me."

"So, can I have it back then?" Tommy asked.

Forrester laughed and laughed as a bug came up behind him. He nearly collapsed as he handed the bug the morpher. "Wow, you really can't handle how it feels, can't you?"

"How what—"

Forrester shoved himself up against Tommy. "How it feels to be just like everybody else. . ."

Tommy just looked over to Rocky, who was twisting and turning as his arms seemed grow faster than the chains could handle. _Enough of this nonsense._ "Why are you doing this, man? How did you get of jail?" Tommy asked.

Forrest walked back over the eye carved into the floor "Do really think anybody cared that much about a crazy old man who stole a piece of stone from a museum? The E.S.B didn't think I knew anything to be worth their trouble. But they were wrong, I knew a lot of things," he said as he unbuttoned his dress shirt.

With a growl, Rocky exploded out of his chains before flopping on the floor, writhing. Forrester didn't seem to much at all about one of his prisoners being free.

"For one," Forrester said, taking his shirt off, "I knew everything about the Ka'zar, even their name, almost nobody knew that. I knew what the Ka'zar believed, what they feared, what they built, and where they built it."

Two bugs came out of the dark and stuck some cords or cables into his back. Forrester went on, "That tablet for instance, I think it was some kind of warning. After touching the symbols in a certain sequence, it showed me things. Things I couldn't even imagine. Things the E.S.B would never allow the world to know."

"You ever think of actually listening to clear warnings?" Tommy said.

"You wouldn't understand," Forrester said, "you don't need this power the way my people do."

"The people you manipulated?" Tommy said.

"White Ranger, I only did to them what you've been doing to them for years," Forrester said.

"What are you talking about?"

"I lived in the city," Forrester said, "and I know what it's like. These people, they worship you, praise you, hang on every word you say. They're all weak, because of you. Sure they were happy when everything was going fine and dandy, but as soon as the situation changed, as soon as they had to deal with problems that their precious Power Rangers couldn't and wouldn't solve for them, they lost it! And I was there to pick up the pieces. I gave them hope, I gave them something to believe in, I gave them power."

A bug came out of the dark and handed Forrester the key. He gazed at it ravenously as he ran his fingers all around it. "And I'm gonna give them a lot more when this is over."

Tommy just was stunned at how insane everything was, and yet, how it all made sense to him at the same time. _There's gotta be a way to talk him out of this,_ he thought. "Do you really think your gonna be able to work that thing? It's old, it probably doesn't even have any juice left."

"Well it's like I said, White Ranger, I know everything the Ka'zar built, everything." With a snap of Forrester's fingers, more bugs came into the light, each one had attached to them the same cords attached to Forrester. They all sat in a circle around him.

Purple electricity ran from the bugs, through the cords, straight into Forrester's back. The bugs collapsed before him. He wriggled and writhed as the key's blade spun around its jewel. His eyes illuminated purple as his face began to crystalize.

Two bugs helped Rocky get to his knees.

Forrester's voice deepened as he raised the key into the air. "The Mirinoians called it the B'lar. The Aquitians called it the Kalarum. And the Ka'zar called it the Key. No matter what mythology you read, you'll find that this item is a gateway to the secrets beyond this realm. That may whoever hold it may be given direct access to the forces of time and space itself, and it's my gateway to the Dark Specter."

Rocky managed gurgle some words out of his mouth. "You don't really believe in any of this Dark Specter stuff, do you? You're just a con."

"But I do," Forrester said as he levitated off the ground, "Sure, at first I just wanted the people to believe in something that would make them see just how much they were being held back by their heroes and their governments, but as my brothers began to evolve, it became clear to me that the legends were true! It was clear sign that we were being driven by a greater consciousness to usher in a new world!

"And it's a world I want you to be a part of Rocky Desantos," Forrester said.

One of the bugs placed a blaster in Rocky's claw before they walked back into the dark. Rocky just stared at the blaster, eyes twitching.

"I have seen what you've done, brother. And I must say, I am impressed. The will of the Dark Specter rushes through you. Even as we speak, it beckons to you."

Rocky ambled back to his feet, twitching and squirming.

"Come on, man!" Tommy said. "You can't be buying this!"

Trembling, Rocky just looked down at the blaster as it laid in the palms of his hands.

"Zane was weak," Forrester said,"but you are strong. You truly understand what it means to do whatever is necessary for the greater good. Kill the White Ranger, and take Zane's place in the order of the cosmos."

New shards of crystal ripped across Rocky's forehead. He seized inwards, and as if it would relieve some pressure, he pointed the blaster at Tommy.

Tommy's jaw quivered. "Rocky. . ."

He just hissed back at him, eyes bulging.

Forrester raised himself over five feet off the ground."You know better than I now, Desantos. When the time came for you to free yourself from fear, he took that choice away from you. He is the very prison that's been holding you captive your entire life!" Energy sparked out of Forrester's fingers as he stretched his arms out. His form seemed wave and in shift in purple aura around him. "I'm giving you that choice back to you. Kill him, and fear nothing ever again."

Rocky lumbered over to Tommy, eyes glazed over, his hand shaking.

In the spark of the moment, Tommy said the first thing came into his head: "Why did you come back?"

Rocky stopped. He tilted his head at Tommy. "What?" he said.

"At the house, the agents and the bugs were gonna blow each other away, Zane was probably gonna die in the crossfire. You had what you wanted. Why did you come back to get me? In fact, why did you come here in the first place? "

Rocky's whole body quivered. "Because. . . because. . ."

"Because you wanted to, right?" Tommy said, "You wanted to, so you did it. Now tell me, what do you want to do right now?"

Rocky turned his attention to the floor, then to the ceiling. He darted his head all over the place,like he was looking for a way out.

"Desantos!" Forrester yelled from above, "The Dark Age is coming! You can either be apart of it, or wiped out by it. Now, kill him!"

Rocky finally looked at Tommy straight in the eye, and Tommy looked straight back at him, staring deep into his unmatching pair of eyes. "What do you want to do, man?" Tommy said,"Because, I don't think you want to shoot me."

"Why?" Rocky said, "What makes you so sure I won't do it?"

Tommy grinned at him. "Because, only a creep would do that."

He stared at Tommy for moment, then took a breath.

He spun around and fired at Forrester. With a blinding flash, a rippling boom reverberated throughout the kept his head down as the bursting aura blasted the roof apart, sending chunks of metal tumbling to the floor.

 _Smack!_ Forrester hit the ground.

Pushing and slaming against any bugs that got in his way, Rocky sprinted over to Tommy and ripped his chains off in pull swift pull. Without hesitation, Tommy grabbed his chair and thrashed it at the first bug that lunged at him. Swiftly, Rocky gunned down wave after wave of bugs. They crawled after them, covering the floor, and descending down the walls. They inched ever closer to them, on all fours. Tommy and Rocky went back-to-back to face the swarm around them.

And then they stopped. The bugs all scurried away as the key lifted Forrester back to his feet again.

His illuminescent grinned at them. "It's here. . ." Forrester raised the key in front of them. The jewel sparked as the blade spun. Purple bolts fired straight into his head, making Forrester jump back with every bolt.

 _It's busted,_ Tommy thought as he saw the cracks forming on the key's jewel. No second thoughts, he just went for it.

"Alright man, thanks for saving my life. See ya," Tommy said before charging after Forrester.

"What do you think your doing?" Rocky said.

"No Idea."

Tommy grabbed the key. Forrester wrapped his free arm around Tommy's neck and tried to pull the key away from him. Tommy's tried to anchor Forrester off of him. They were about to tumble to the ground, then a bolt fired into Tommy's skull.

 _Flash!_

* * *

"Tommy! Tommy!" Rocky screamed as he shaked Tommy's unconscious body. His eyes were open, but empty. He had a pulse, but his body was cold and pale.

The building quaked as more chunks of metal and concrete rained onto the floor. The bugs swarmed throughout the building, and climbed out of the gash in the ceiling. A wave of them crashed and carried Rocky away from Tommy's body.

"Get off me! Get off me!" Rocky yelled as he tugged and pulled at the crowd, but Rocky couldn't even hear himself. The sound of the bugs infernal hissing rang incessantly through his ears. It was only matched by Forrester's laugh as it echoed throughout the building.

In the distance, he saw them sweep Tommy's body off the ground before a large mass of stone ruptured from the floor.

The bugs carried Rocky all the way to the ceiling, and Rocky saw it. As they climbed up through the gash, he saw the night sky turn into blinding white light.


	11. The Dark Age

_Who am I?_

He wandered through the white void, dazed. Nothingness surrounded him, no shape, no size, no smell, no color, no identity. There might have been sound, maybe, but it was off. Like, he couldn't hear anything, but there was still this ringing in his ears. It was like that high-pitched squeal that comes out of a T.V. while there are technical difficulties. Except, it really wasn't like that at all.

But did he even have ears? Or feet? Or hands? He was enigma to himself. Concentrating as hard as possible, he tried to remember something about who he was. Only a few words came to mind, a couple of names, Tommy Oliver and Alan Forrester. But what did they mean?

Shadows leaked into the void, like ink. They flowed to the bottom of his vision, where a floor should of been, and from the bottom, they shot up great shadow arms that reached up to the sky. There was a sky now.

A street. He was walking on a street. The shadow arms were buildings now. Yes, he was walking through Angel Grove with a couple of coffees in his hands, he remembered this. It was such a beautiful day, cool and breezy, the warm sun shining down on his face. It was fresh start for him, a new beginning. But what was he doing?

"Alan! Over here!"

He snapped his over to the voice, and in the distance, he saw her. She waved and motioned for him to come closer. Walking up to her, she became more clear to him, her long blonde hair flowing out of her black beret, her tan trench coat, her red lips.

"What was taking you so long?" Jasmine said. Yes, her name was Jasmine, like the princess in their favorite movie. Sweet Jasmine. _My Jasmine._

"Sorry, _mom!_ But the line was long," he said with a smile as he handed her latte.

"Don't call me that!" She jabbed him in the shoulder. "Just because I worry about you doesn't make me your mother. God, I hope I don't have anything in common with that witch!"

He laughed, because he knew he was was right. She babied him constantly, for years. Everytime he got dressed, she alway had to look him over and "fix" him. She'd always insist that he'd eat a lunch that wouldn't raise his cholesterol, and she'd always call him every twenty minutes if he wasn't back home on time. Maybe she always wanted to be a mom? Who knows?

Something cold touched his finger. He looked down, of course it was his ring. He had it on everyday for fifthteen years. How could he have forgotten about it? But even stranger, his hand was different now. It was wrinkled, aged. Did he have a beard now?

She was different too. Her blonde hair was giving away to silver. Age lines appeared on edges of her face. Still beautiful. "So you think your really going to make a difference here?" she asked.

What? Oh, yeah. They were standing in front of the museum. He'd just gotten the job was one of the head researchers. He'd be able to do what he loved for a living, uncovering history. And at a high-paying, pseudo-government job too! He didn't really understand some of the details, but whatever.

"Yeah," he said, "here I'm going to be able to find out just exactly how small we are in the universe, maybe how small the universe itself is."

"You're a crazy old man. You know that?" she said.

"Not my fault," he said. She jabbed at him again, and they laughed together.

The ground began to quake, and the sun's light vanished from existence. Up in the sky, he couldn't believe it, a colossal mechanical man wrestling a leviathan, a weird starfish, squid-thing. The titans tumbled by the nearby buildings.

Strange thoughts came to him, thoughts that didn't seem to belong to him, or did they? _I tried. We tried so hard to keep the fight from getting into the city, but it was impossible! It just kept pushing us back!_

Spiders, they crawled all over him. He tried to swat them away, but they just kept coming at him. They leapt from the leviathan and swarmed him, webbing him.

"Alan! Alan!" she screamed as the spiders covered her body.

"Jasmine!" he yelled. He tugged and pulled at the webbing as hard as he could, but it was like pushing against steel. He tried, but his muscles ached with every attempt. He was too weak, too old.

They all came after her, crawling all over her, webbing her, taking her. She screeched as they all swarmed over her face.

"No!"

"No! Absolutely not!" Mr. Bennett said. "You're crazy if you think this is a good idea!"

He was sitting in a chair now, in Mr. Bennett's office. Yes, they said were going to cut him off from looking any further in the ruins, and that they were gonna handle the excavation site from now on. They basically told him to shut up and stay out of their way.

He looked down at Bennett's desk, files, pictures scattered throughout it. The tablet, they were about tablet. It was the last thing from the site he looked at himself. When he touched his hands on it, many strange things went through his mind, great things, fantastic things, horrible things.

"I swear to you!" he said as he jammed his finger onto the desk papers. "There's more down there than artifacts. It's something big, and I think it may even go as far as leading to under the city. I've been doing some translating and—"

"Enough! Enough of this!" Mr. Bennett said. "I'm not going to allow you mess around with museum property. The project is over, the tablet is moving over to display, let it go."

"Why?" he asked.

"Why?!" Bennett walked over to the door, and for a split second he opened the shades. At the other end of the hall, a couple of men in black suits talked among themselves. "That's why!"

Bennett walked back over to his chair. "I have my career to think about, Alan. I can't afford to go around the E.S.B's back, this institute can't afford it, and frankly, neither can you."

He looked over all the pictures. No, he wasn't going to let this happen, not again. No more negotiating with a faceless institution. Action must be taken. Whatever was down there, the people needed to know about it.

He slammed his fist on the desk.

He slammed his fist on his cell bed. His brain felt like it was bubbling and melting in his skull. They locked him up in this shoebox of a room. Dim lights, awful smell, itchy clothes, it was all the White Ranger's fault. He was so close to uncovering the location of the key, but that arrogant fascist took it all away from him, he took away his chance to take the E.S.B down, he took away humanity's chance to evolve. _He took away my wife._

He walked over to the mirror and saw his face, his old face. It was the face someone's whose life was behind him. He was nothing now, no friends, no family, and now for the rest of his life he was going to ridiculed as a crackpot.

The mirror cracked as he pounded his fist into it, but his fist didn't. In fact, he didn't feel any pain at all. He looked at his fist, and his knuckles seemed to glisten, like they were made of diamonds.

He wandered back to his bed.

He wandered through the darkness, his light beam reaching out beyond him. _It has to be here,_ he thought. _The sewers must of been built over-top of it. There has to be some way to get to it._

He walked alone with the sound of rushing water being his only company. His mind was slipping from him. Random words and phrases that he could remember would shoot in and out of his brain.

" _Va'ma clur-ka suk to da,_ " he said. It was Aquitian for: _Peace is never given. It must always be taken._ It was a quote from some famous aquitian general after he won the war that unified the planet, or something. It he couldn't really remember.

He had it. This must of be the edge of the sewers, and with his pick axe, he hammered at the wall.

" _Terra nil vor pi se kunk,_ " he said. It was Triforian for: _The persistence of vision is the key to shaping the world._ It was from the written legend about the first ruler of Triforia. The story of how he went from peasant to king.

He slammed at the wall so hard that the axe snapped of its handle. Enraged, he banged his fists against the wall, but the wall was gone now. Head first, he fell into the water, and the stream carried over many twists and turns before spitting him out onto land.

Looking up, his eyes caught a glimpse of what he had been dreaming of his whole life. The greatest archaeological find. A grand cyclopean city that stretched out before him. A titanic pyramid waited on the edge, for him.

As he gazed at the marvelous city, his hand started to burn. It twitched and convulsed on its own. He rolled up his sleeve and saw the glistening crystal growing and pulsating all over his arm. His fingers stretched and grew, his nails became pointed and sharp.

His ring cracked and disintegrated off his finger.

As he looked at his writhing claw, he whispered: " _Hark te mor kruk salle mur vor."_ It was from the Ka'zar, from the last line of the tome of the Dark Specter. In it, the Kazarian wise man says to the people: _The only way to defeat the darkness is to become it._

* * *

The sewers were pulled away from him, like someone pulling the cloth off of a table, and the whiteness of the void returned. _Alan, no! Stop! Stop! You can't do this—I can't do this? What. . ._

It all snapped back in his brain, Rocky, Zane, Forrester, the key, everything rushed back to him. He wasn't Alan. He was Tommy.

Tommy curled up into a ball on the ground, or whatever he was laying on. His face burned and swelled, his mind was dizzy. Clenching his eyes shut, he tried to get his bearings, but everything was so unreal. The closest thing he could get to something material was his own thoughts. Replaying in his mind over and over were Jasmine's screams. _We tried. We always tried our best to keep people safe. What if we weren't there at all? It's not our fault. It's not my fault._

 _No, it's never anybody's,_ Tommy thought, but it wasn't really his thought. That thought came to him from somewhere else.

Eyes opening, he saw a layer of crystal forming around him. A dome of crystal enclosed him. Millions of confused Tommys reflected back at him. A heavenly light burned at the edge of the dome. Struggling to get to his feet, he approached it.

The light shaped itself into a golden throne, which rotated itself to face him. She formed within it, her pale face, her feathered wings, her sparkling blue dress. "It's never anybody's fault," she whispered.

"Guardian?" Tommy said. "What's happening? Where am I? Where's Forrester?"

"Your ally damaged the key, and in your struggle, you and Forrester's consciousness were merged. Forrester separated shortly after some coaxing from his followers," she said.

"And what is 'here'?" Tommy asked.

"What once was, what is, what is not, and what will be."

"Enough with the mystical-pseudoscience! Where am I?!" Tommy yelled.

She pointed her hand beyond Tommy. Turning around, he saw all the crystal architecture meet around the edges of a door. Not a fancy door, just a plain white wooden door that you would find in any house. Glowing white cracks cut their way across the door, the light pulsating.

"The Gate, the blank space between universes," she said, "it existed long before many universe were born, and it will occupy their space when they die."

"What—" Tommy stopped. Something weird was happening to Guardian. It was like her dress was melting into her skin, growing over her. Whatever, not important right now. "What's wrong with the door?" Tommy said.

She breathed heavily out of her nose. "The Key was not meant to be wielded by anyone other than the Guardian of the Gate. With each use of the Key by mortal man, a tear has formed on the Gate, in the fabric between realms."

"What? Why didn't you tell me this?" Tommy said.

"You didn't ask that question," she said, the crystal growing over her hands.

Things were getting weird now, Tommy felt it. Time to ask as many questions as possible. "So, what happens the door gets busted open?"

Her face twitched a little. "Then the fabric between universes will fall apart. The blankness will seep in and erase your world."

"And Forrester is going to make that happen? To bring the Dark Specter?"

"Yes," she said as the crystal formations climbed up her neck. "He will try gather as much power as possible to burst the gate open," she said through gritted teeth, like she was annoyed by something.

"Guardian, is something wrong?" he asked.

She closed her eyes as the crystal swallowed her hair and expanded to the edges of her face. "No," she said, "the natural order of events are taking place exactly as they should. No abnormalities."

"Uh, okay then. . . How do I stop Forrester?'

She spread her wings wide open, and her feathers hardened. They stiffened and crystallized as she folded them back. "You can't," she said.

"Yeah I can," Tommy said,"I just got to get out of here. What about that swor—"

"No," she said, "you don't understand. You can't stop him because you won't. You won't stop him because you don't stop him."

"You don't know that! I'm a Power Ranger! It's my job," Tommy said.

"Enough!" Guardian scratched at her head with her sharp crystallized nails. "You can't stop this because knowledge is the real power, and knowledge belongs to those who can truly see. . ."

As she lifted her hand away from her head, something began to burn onto her forehead, smoking, etching it's way its way through the crystal. It was a fiery red ring that shaped itself into an eye. _The eye._

". . .And I see everything."

Unreal. This was unreal to him. Trembles went throughout his body. Frantically, his hands twitchted, and he wrung them together to stop them. It didn't work. He couldn't really be here right now, could he? His eyes darted around the dome for answers, but he knew he already knew the answers. It all made too much sense. She had been there with him since the beginning of all this. It was her.

"You. . .You're the Dark Specter," Tommy said. It was clear now, the way he was drawn to the Key, like he couldn't resist it. "You tricked me! And Forrester! You brainwashed us into using the Key and destroying our home!"

"No," she whispered, "the Dark Specter is a Kazarian myth that Forrester fooled himself and others into believing after tasting the altering powers of the Gate. They are choosing to use the Key and end their world, because they believe they have to. I didn't make them do that. I can't make them do that. I didn't make you use the Key either. You asked me a question, and I gave you the answer. You did what you felt you had to do after that. I'm not destroying your home, your are, because your universe's time has come."

Violently, Tommy scratched at his skull. "But, how could have known this would happen? So many things had to. . . I mean, what if—"

"What if? What if?!" she said, laughing. The crystal cocooned itself around her face, shielding it. The large eye burned itself all over the surface of the crystal mask. The dome began to illuminate.

 _Flash!_

Floating, he was floating now. It was dark and cold. Little bits of light began to sprinkle in, stars? They had to be. He was in space, but why? Noise finally began to fade in. A slight rumble began to shape itself into a voice, his voice.

"Help me save him!" he heard himself say from a distance. The echoing whirl of the Key's blade followed.

She was still there with him. _And, Mr. Oliver, after you saved your ally then came the first cut._

Space itself ripped open, spreading open a wide slit in the blackness. Bright, the white light from it was unimaginably bright, impossibly bright. Looking at it wouldn't of just blinded him. It would obliterate him.

Waves came from it, and they pushed him. They pushed him so far that the tear became speck. Something glinted in the corner of his eye, a ship? Yes, a little space ship raced across Tommy's vision. The ship had some red writing painted across its side. _Wait, is that the ship that Billy and Zack found that one day?_

 _Yes, . The very same one that led to your friend's injury. The pilot was flying It's ship, trying to take care of their own problems, until. . ._

The waves still kept on coming, and they smacked against the ship. One last burst of blue fire came out of the nozzle before it tore apart. The entire ship was swung over to its side. It tumbled through space.

Something new came out of the blackness, a gigantic metallic object the size and of a skyscraper with a dome top and metal ring surrounding it. Was that the science station that those aliens were on?

Tommy was standing on the station floor now. All around him, the green men were going about their day, kneeling over glass cases and jotting down notes on the their clipboards.

 _They were on the verge of discovering a new form of life, but life has a strange of revealing itself. Look, Mr. Oliver, Look!_

Tommy turned his head to the nearest window. The ship tumbled its way close and closer, and closer. . .

 _Crash!_

The lights went out as Tommy fell on the floor. The ground quaked as they yelled all around him. Something sharp cut a little against his finger. He lifted his head to see the pink slime ooze out of the shattered glass case on the floor.

 _It was free now, and so you rangers decided it would be best to destroy it._

Fire engulfed Tommy, and when it died down he found himself looking down at the burning space station from miles away. Each crash from each little explosion on the station rumbled through him.

A meteoroid flew by, and with one last push from the erupting space station, it was flung right toward him.

 _Even the smallest disruptions can cause the biggest shifts in an object's movement through space, Mr. Oliver._

His feet stood on grass now. _Oh, am I back? Is this over now?_ he thought. But, he knew it was too good to be true as he saw the meteor come to earth, falling so slowly that it barely seemed to be moving at all.

 _Zobsianite, one of the rarest minerals in the entire galaxy, was contained in that meteor, Mr. Oliver. Zobsianite is when known on Horath for its electromagnetic properties, capable of taking out even the most sophisticated of technology, even your morphers._

And in a green flash, the meteor hit the ground. Darkness surrounded Tommy, but he still felt like he was standing on something, not grass, a floor. He looked around. It was some kind of room. Something moved in the corner of his eye.

"Kim!" he yelled. She was being pulled down some steps by some guy in a hoodie.

He rushed at the guy, and got his fist within an inch of the man's face, but it wouldn't connect. Tommy was stuck there, frozen.

 _Now, now, , this already happened. Don't you remember when Kimberly told you the story? Look._

He shifted his eyes down. Kim's ankle bleed out as the man gripped it.

 _It's a shame she couldn't morph. That cut her hurt her in more ways than one._

A smoky smell wafted through Tommy's nostrils. Sparks blew in the corner of his eye. He looked over his shoulder. The Command Center, he was back at the day it was attacked.

A console blew, it tossed Kim into the air and onto her feet, onto her ankle. She wailed and scowled as she rubbed at her foot. She morphed just as a couple of figures came out of the smoke.

 _Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Oliver. We need to go back to the meteor for a moment._

"Wait!"

Kim vanished. Everything vanished. In there place stood the smoking meteor in the ground. The ground quaked. Buzzing, a buzzing sound ran through his years. He turned around to find a swarm of silver bee zipping around him.

 _Xombus Zenophila have colonized on far more planets than people have realized. However, most people probably would be able to tell you that they wouldn't like it if a giant celestial object crashed into their hive._

The bees buzzed past him, taking the sky and the earth with him. Tommy now stood in a dark blue room. It was so cold now. Next to Tommy, a man in a cloak flipped switches at a console.

As he reached for a switch, his sleeve pulled back, revealing his red gooey hand. A hand that encased in a metal exoskeleton. _Zedd?_ Tommy thought. _Zedd is still alive?_

 _Very much so, Mr. Oliver. And he's very angry._ _Unfortunately for him, the tear's waves reached his planet right as he was attempting to hack Jason's teleportation beam._

Zedd's console exploded.

 _Flash!_

Freezing, it was freezing snow whirled by Tommy's head. He looked around at the endless blue and white void. Tommy tried to pull his feet out of mountain of snow that they were stuck in.

Out in the distance, he could see him trying to crawl out of the winter fog. "Jason!" Tommy called out. "Jason! Over here!"

 _Flash!_

 _And the rest, as they say Mr. Oliver, is history. . ._

 _Flash!_

The tear ripped itself open, wider and wider. White waves emanate from out of it, down to the earth.

 _Flash!_

Deep in the Command Center, a pile of ashes form themselves into Bones' head, into his hideous smile.

 _Flash!_

Zane ran miles ahead of the pursuing cop cars with his mouth wide open, and his tongue sticking out.

 _Flash!_

Forrester stood on the top of a stone staircase. Electricity flowed through the wires in his back. He lifted the Key above his head, up to a great swirling black void.

He and everything around him turned to dust.

 _Flash!_

Hazily, the dome began to reform around him. He was on the floor again. Desperately, he tried to rub the pain out of his. When he removed his hands, she stood over him, the eye radiating back down at him.

"There is no 'What if' ", she said. "Everything has a cause, and that cause will to a certain effect. This will happen every single time, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem." She threw something, and it clattered onto the floor.

He grabbed it, a quarter, just a quarter, like the one he dropped at the museum, the one that lead him to Forrester. "But, I could of done something different," he said. "I could of caught the coin. I could of told Jason about Forrester instead of going after him."

"You've seen what I've seen," she said. "The Gate has revealed to you the truth." Everything became transparent, her, the coin, the dome, even him. Everything began to shake too, and split apart into a million pieces.

"You couldn't of caught the coin, she said. "The forces acting on that coin compelled it to flip slightly off center, and you were distracted, angry at the E.S.B. Why? For the same reason you chased after Forrester, because Tommy Oliver cannot stand the idea of someone holding him back, keeping him away from the thing he wants, controlling him. . ."

His vision snapped back to normal. Just in time to see the coin melt in his hand. It's color became lighter and lighter as it melted, going from grey to gold. George Washington's face stretched and contorted until it became the claw of the dragon, the mark of the of the Green Ranger.

 _No!_ He threw the coin at the dome wall. It smashed right through, only for the crystal shards to push themselves back into place.

Guardian knelt down and grabbed his throat. ". . . And he will react irrationally, every single time."

His vision kept snapping back and forth as she spoke, from solid to transparent, from stationary to vibrating. "But don't worry, Tommy," she said,"It's not your fault. It's never anybody's fault, because you people don't exist. You are a series of chemical reactions in an organ that can be broken down into a mass of vibrating particles that can be manipulated and predicted. You couldn't choose to do anything else, and you couldn't possibly save your world because you and your world are just a part of my vision, my dream."

Her hand constricted this throat, but he managed to cough up a few words. He gritted his teeth together and tried to annunciate. "Do. . . you. . . know. . . where the sword is?"

"It's a Kazarian legend," she said.

"But is it real? You have to tell me."

She squeezed hard at his throat, then released. "Yes. . . yes it is." She walked back to her throne.

Tommy rubbed his throat as he sat back up. "Will it destroy you?" he asked.

"There must always be a guardian. . ."

"But will it destroy 'you', like in the legend?"

She squirmed in her seat. Little chinks began to crackle in her crystal hyde. "Yes, but you do remember what happens when if Dark Specter is killed, ?"

He shifted his eyes to the floor. The words she spoke to him revolved around in his mind. _Then they themselves would become the darkness. . . the new Dark Specter._ He looked straight back at her. "Yeah," he said.

"Would you do that to yourself?" she said.

Tommy grinned. "I thought you knew everything?"

She clenched her clawed hands into fists.

"So, can you show me everything you know about the sword?" Tommy said.

She tilted her head to the side as the dome illuminated.

 _Flash!_

* * *

Dirt, he was crawling around in red dirt. Grains of sand blew in the wind across his face. The sky swirled between red and black, and as he got to his feet he saw something out in the distance. A city, maybe? It was hard to tell.

Rumbling came in, but was it from the ground or from the sky? The ground shaked, but crackling could be heard from the sky, maybe beyond the sky. The colors began to shift, more and more, the black began to displace the red, and there didn't seem to be any stars in the blackness either. What's going on here? He had to figure it out. "Where am !?" he called out.

 _Before time, Mr. Oliver. Before your time._

The city slowly came to him, or did he come to the city? Either way, the distance between them shrank and he found himself at the center of the action. Towers, rotted bricks, entire castles fell apart all around him. The entire city was falling in on itself, collapsing. People were moving all around him, he could tell, but they were barely visible. They were like shadows, gliding across him. Any noise they made was slow and distorted.

"Guardian, what's going on?" he asked.

 _The fate of all universes, the end of time, energy, matter, light. The Big Crunch. Only a few of us saw it coming._

Chunks of stone fell in front Tommy, but they slowed as they fell, until they just floated in front of him. Two shadows walked by, their approximate forms became more and defined as sound began to speed back up.

"Mommy! Wait!" the shadow said as it formed into a person, a little girl with fiery red hair and big, watery, eyes.

The other shadow shaped itself. It was a tall lady with a silver gown and long blonde hair.

"Guardian?" Tommy asked.

 _A guardian, Mr. Oliver, the original crafter of the Gate._

The girl tugged at her mother's dress, furiously. "Mommy, we have to—"

She grabbed the girl by the shoulders and shook her. "They're already dead!" she yelled as she pulled her daughter up close to her face. "We have a duty to uphold! Now, let's move on." The lady raised out her open hand, and the Key materialized within. She held it tight as the blade began to whirl and the jewel illuminated.

The rocks finally fell, cracks scarred across the ground, the red sky gave completely away to blackness. Everything faded away, faded away into nothing, into infinite night.

The white void faded back in, and so did the girl. She knelt down on the floor as she sobbed, covering her face. Something rose out of the ground behind her, a plain wooden door. Her mother came, walking straight through the closed door.

The girl peeked her eyes away from her hands. "We could've done something, anything. We didn't even try."

Her mother just tapped the Key onto the door's surface, and it clicked, locked. She strode past her weeping daughter, not even looking at her.

"Mom!" she screeched as she tugged at her mother's silver dress.

"Enough!" She pushed her daughter down as her silver dress unfolded into wide spreading wings. She lunged at her child. "We have a responsibility to not interfere, only to maintain the cosmos, and to ensure its survival."

Her wings folded back into her gown, and she turned away from her daughter. "Our time is over," she said, walking away, fading away.

 _Harsh,_ Tommy thought.

The girl crawled over to the door and placed her hand on it. The door became transparent, and through it a cloud of dust, stars, and planets began to compress onto itself, shrinking into a single speck.

Banging her fists on the door, she screamed, and wailed, and sobbed before sliding down and curling into a ball.

Tommy walked up to her. _Poor kid,_ he thought, _her family, her friends, her home, everyone and everything she ever loved is gone, and she'll never understand why, just that it's gone._

 _Indeed, Mr. Oliver._

Through the door, the speck began to expand and decompress, stretching infinitely outward. Twinkles of light began to sparkle in this new mass, stars? The whole scene reminded him a lot science documentaries he had to sit through in class.

"Is that. . ."

 _The Big Bang? Yes, Mr. Oliver, it is the beginning of your universe. The girl before you is destined to spend all eternity in this void, watching you and others create and experience real lives, all because her mother couldn't stand being alone in this nightmare!_

Gasping, someone was gagging and gasping for breath behind him. Tommy turned around.

The Key rolled onto the floor as the mother fell onto her knees. Her eyes enlarged as she wrung her hands over the glowing white cut in her throat. She keeled over onto her hands.

She faded in, and picked up the key. She was older now, and as her mother's wings withered, her's began to stretch, as her mother's color began to fade, her's glowed. Her hair turned from fiery red to golden blonde. She was the guardian Tommy knew.

"What are you doing?" her mother coughed as her skin began to crackle.

"Your time is over, mother," she said,"It's time for me to take back what is rightfully mine." The door rose out of the ground, and she walked toward it.

Like ceramic, her mother began to crumble into pieces."You can't do this! You know what happens when the Gate's fully opened!"

"Yes," she said, "home again." She held up the Key. It's blade whirled, it's jewel illuminated. She inched to the door.

Her mother jumped at her, toppling her to the ground. With her remaining arm, her mother grabbed the Key, and flung it through the door, leaving a small crack behind.

Guardian rushed to the door, peering through the crack. She slammed her fists repeatedly into the door. "This isn't over, mother," she whispered, "You know that someone will find it, and will use it."

Only her mother's head remained. She looked up at her daughter as her face began to disintegrate into the floor. "I'm sorry, my dear. That won't matter. You have already sealed your fate, goodbye." And then, she was dust.

Guardian peered back into the crack.

"What did she mean? And does this have to do with the sword?!" Tommy said.

 _Waiting is painful, isn't it, Mr. Oliver? But I was willing to do it. For as I told you, everything is just a mass of vibrating particles that can be manipulated and predicted._

Guardian looked at the door then she placed her hands on it. She dug her fingers into the wood, leaving behind little illuminating scratches.

 _Flash!_

He was floating in space again, the Key floated by him. His vision went screwy again, the Key became transparent, and he saw all the vibrating particles that made up the Key.

 _Your home was my sculpture, Mr. Oliver. One scratch at a time, I was able to move the particles where I wanted them to be._

A white wave rushed by and pushed Tommy, thrusted him and the key through space. A speck, grew bigger and bigger, until he realized he hurtling toward a planet.

 _Flash!_

Tommy was in the bushes now, at night Out in the distance, a man in golden armor laid onto the ground and reached deep into a smoking crater. The man pulled out the Key, and rolled it around in his hands. The man gazed at it then looked back into the crater.

 _I ensured that the Ka'zar would find the Key. Little did I know that they would find something else, a side effect of my interactions with the Gate._

 _Flash!_

Tommy was in the crater now, another white wave crashed into it. The burning bright light of the wave slowly dimmed and formed itself into a sterling silver sword.

"Hey! Look I got over here!" a voice called out.

Tommy looked up over his shoulder, and he felt the hot sun blare down at him from a hole. He turned back to the sword. It was laying sideways on a stone pedestal, surrounded by stalactites. Were they in a cave now?

"It's amazing!" the voice called out again.

He turned back to the whole above him. Two men, two humans, stared back down at the sword from above. One man was in awe. The other was completely stern. One man in a typical construction worker's get-up. The other in a familiar black suit and sunglasses.

Tommy turned back to the sword. It was in a glass case now, being pulled away on a cart. Where was he now? Looking around, he seemed to be in wide a lobby with a lot of people going in and out. . .

"The Museum!" he shouted, "It's at the museum right now!"

 _Congratulations, Mr. Oliver. But it won't do you any good._

He pointed his finger up and yelled at the sky. "I am going to stop you! I—"

His finger disappeared, bringing his hand down, he saw that it was fading in and out. Both of his hands were fading too, and his arms. Soon his whole body was fading out of existence. "What th—"

 _I'm sorry Mr. Oliver, but it appears your friends want you to awaken from your slumber, just as I predicted._

"Guardian! I will—" His mouth vanished before he could continue.

 _Oh yes, , I know. You will try. You will try. . ._

* * *

"Tommy! Tommy! Are you there?"

His eyes opened to a blur of light that formed into something, this thing with black eyes and blue skin. It shook Tommy's knee with it's three fingered claws, and it called to him with its large jaws. As his vision came into focus, Tommy realized that he was facing whatever it was that the radiation turned Rocky into.

Rocky turned his large head behind him. He was a complete bug now, a tall, slender bug with sharp crystal skin that reflected light back into Tommy's eyes. His mouth was obscured by a couple of slimy wriggling pinchers, and little things (Horns? Antennas?) stuck out of his head.

"He's coming through," Rocky said over his shoulder. He turned back to Tommy. Small remnants of human skin laid around his left eye."You, alright?"

"What. . ." The environment bounced him up and down, and it was small too. He leaned his head toward the square of light next to him. Grass rushed by under a pure white sky. He must be in a truck, or something.

The grass burst into flames as a red beam flew into it. His side bounced onto the back seat as the truck swerved right.

"Bug, I'm gonna need some help here!" a familiarly angry voice yelled from the driver seat. _No way,_ Tommy thought as he pulled himself up to see him Walker frantically turned his attention from the road ahead to the rearview mirror, holding his bleeding shoulder while he drove.

"Hey kid," Walker said with a wince as he squeezed his shoulder.

"What's going on?" Tommy asked.

"Your friend here helped us get out of there," Walker said.

Rocky cranked at a dial on a silver can and thrusted it out the window. Tommy looked through the back window. Two black cars raced after them. The can tumbled on the road before exploding in a puff of green smoke, consuming the cars.

"Walker, where are we going?" Tommy asked.

"No idea, I have to assume all of the E.S.B facilities must be compromised by Forrester. I don't think I can trust anyone."

Tommy grabbed Walker's good shoulder. "I need to get to the museum! I think there's something there that can—"

 _Boom!_

Tommy's head almost slammed into the dashboard as the truck jumped. Tugging at the wheel with a rigid grip, Walker swerved the truck over to the side. It skidded to a stop. The three of them looked at each other, then at the cars slowly peering out of the smoke.

Walker banged his fist onto the wheel. "Screw it, arm me."

Rocky slid a hand blaster over to him, and Walker placed it onto his knee then reached deep into his jacket. Grimacing, he pulled something out and slammed it onto the dash, the white morpher and the communicator.

"Get out of here. I'll slow them down" Walker said.

"What? Are you crazy? They'll rip you apart," Tommy said.

Walker gripped and tugged at his shoulder. "Listen kid, it's either I slow them down, or I slow you down. The bug can get you to the city from here. You need to go!"

"He's got a point," Rock said as he climbed climbed out of the truck.

Tommy scrambled for words, but random phrases shot through his brain. Anything he thought that would help. "But— It can't—You. . ." It was useless. This was going to happen.

Walker pushed the door open. "Look kid, you were right. The earth needs the Power Rangers, not me, that's why you have to go!" Walker climbed out of the truck. He looked back only for a moment. "Now!"

Tommy snatched his stuff and followed Rocky as he ran from the truck. Angel Grove twinkled in the distance, must of been at least thirty miles away.

"How are w— Hey!" Tommy said as Rocky picked him up and flung him over his shoulder like he was a ragdoll.

He took off. Blowing hard in his eyes, the wind zoomed at Tommy as Rocky ran miles and miles a minutes. Tommy held a death hug around Rocky's neck as he flopped around on his crystal back.

Even though it was hard to focus, he tried to think about the next move should be. They needed a place to lay low for awhile until he knew for sure how to tackle the museum, to figure out whether or not it he could regroup with any of the rangers before he could go there himself. He also needed to find a way to resync the communicator to the teleportation grid.

He figured out exactly where they needed to go next.

* * *

Miracle, it was a weird little miracle that Aisha's home seemed completely untouched by the chaos going on in city. They travel from abandoned home to burning building to get to it. They ducked inbetween graffiti covered structures to hide from military trucks, and crawled under dismantled cars to get to this place. And yet, their house was perfectly neat, nicely cut green lawn, bright white walls, and a fluorescent orange welcome matt. Tommy put his fist up to the door.

"Bah, it's them!" Rocky yelled as a black car rolled down the street. Hopping up onto the Front door's overhanging roof, Rocky tried to hide from the quickly passing car.

 _Very inconspicuous,_ Tommy thought. He returned to banging his fist on the door. "Aisha! Aisha! Are you home?!" he called as he knocked. Faintly, he heard some movement from the other side of the door.

An uncombed Aisha came peeking from behind of the door, glasses hanging of her face. "Tommy?" she said, "What's up? Where's the others? Are you alone? Oh boy, some really scary things have been happening. Where have you guys been with all this craziness going on? A couple guys came by earlier asking us strange questions, and—"

"Aisha!" he said, holding his open hands out, "We're in a really tight spot right now, and we need in a place to keep our heads down," Tommy said.

She bit her lip."Oh geez, Tommy. My dad is already pretty tense right now about what's happening. I'm mean he just had to rush to the hardware store before the curf—"

Tommy dropped to his knees. "Please, our lives in your hands."

She tapped her fingers rapidly on the wooden door and exhaled through the door. "Of course, I'll just have to tell my dad you're coming. Who's with you anyway?"

Rocky plopped down in front of her, arms wide open, pinchers squirming, and claws pointed straight at her. "What's up?" he said.

Her scream was earsplitting.

* * *

Mr. Campbell seemed like a kind, if stern man. Not only did he invite them to dinner, but he even agreed to let them stay for a little while. Aisha did say that he helped out those in need for a living, but Tommy couldn't help but see him as a big cold square. sat at the dinner table, tight and closed off in his sweater vest, staring at Rocky through his square spectacles.

Rocky took a bite of of his steak, and half the fork with it. Crunching came out of his pinchers as he chewed away.

"Tommy, you want some bread and butter?" Aisha asked, while reaching for a basket on the table.

"Uh. . . sure," Tommy said, grabbing the bread basket. It was in moments like these that he realized just how weird his life was. It was never when he was out punching alien cheerleading clones in the face, or when he was operating giant robot tigers. But this, eating a steak dinner across from you mutant insectoid friend who almost killed you eats a fork, while your intern's dad who looks like a very angry MLK silently judges him, felt weird.

"So, ," Mr. Campbell said, scratching his burly mustache, "how long have you been a crystal-cockroach?"

"I'm not quite sure to be honest," Rocky said as he was almost about take another bite out of the fork, but stopped himself.

"What were you before then?" asked.

"I was. . . uh. . . just. . . a former gang member," Rocky mumbled as he stared at his plate.

"Riiiiiiight," Mr Campbell said, "And you? ?"

Tommy dropped his fork. "Uh. . .uh," he stammered on. He looked over at Aisha; she just motioned for him to think of something. Okay, so likes to help people in need, people in bad situations. Tommy said the first thing that came to his head

"I'm a former drug dealer," Tommy said. He pointed to Rocky, "Uh, his former drug dealer, but, uh, we both found out drugs were bad, uh, so. . ."

Aisha stood up, "I think it's time we showed you guys to your room."

Tommy put his communicator on the table by his cot and pressed the silver button on the side and it opened up. The holographic map projected out with all the colored dots.

"Alright Aisha," Tommy said, "I know that Zordon has a safe house somewhere in town, and that this can take us there. I just need you figure out how to resync it with the teleportation grid."

Curling up in the chair by the cot, Aisha bit her thumbnail."Gee Tommy," she said," I don't know. The communicators are really complicated, and Billy only showed me so much before things got crazy and. . ."

Tommy sat at edge of the cot, and leaned toward her. He looked right into her clenched eyes. "You," he said, pointing at her,"You have listened to Billy for longer than everybody I've seen. It's amazing, really. Me? I try, I really do try, but after the first word that's longer than seven syllables, I'm gone. You on the other hand, can retain and legitimately understand buttloads of info. You got this."

She squirmed a little then adjusted her glasses. "Okay," she said, "okay, um, I need to get a couple of screwdrivers, so I can properly rewire crotonic cables. Although, it might be better to re-calibrate the vector matrix to. . ."

Tommy grinned. _I think I got this, I think I finally got a hold on this whole leader-thing,_ he thought.

"Hey is it just me, or is the black dot getting pretty close to us?" Rocky said. Tommy snapped his head to the grid, and yes, the black and white dots were almost touching each other.

K _nock! Knock! Knock!_

 _Zack?_ Tommy hoped. He and Aisha ran to the front door. _Oh please, oh please just me have this one. It's gotta be him,_ he thought, _Zack must of found some way of breaking out of the hospital and tracked me here, that as to be it. Oh, if only I could see the look on Guardian's face when she realizes that we are gonna take back our home._

Aisha opened the door. A guy with a backwards baseball cap and a pair of aviators stood on the porch, his head cocked to the side.

"Hey you dudes know what this is?" the guy said as he held up the black communicator.

"Huh?"

"Also, you dudes got any cookies?" he said.

* * *

This was gross and bizarre. He just kinda walked in and helped himself, and Tommy or any of the others were too confused to stop him. They just took a seat and observed him. The weirdo chopped down on chocolate chip cookies in the living room, smacking his lips and indulging himself with every bite. He wiped the milk off his face with a cookie, then burped.

"Who are you?" Tommy asked.

He crushed a couple of cookies into the milk glass, then took a sip, then looked at Tommy as if he forgot he was in the room. "Oh, sorry dude. I'm Adam," he said.

"And you're a. . ." Aisha said.

The guy looked at her like she was crazy." A. . . Adam, and that's about it. I did use to deliver pizzas though, but—" He smacked his lips again. "Man, these cookies are good! You couldn't stuff anymore chips in there."

"How did you get this?!" Tommy said, waving the black communicator

"Well dude,I was helping some guy evacuate a building a month ago, and he dropped it. Yesterday I was playing with it, because who wouldn't? And it show me this map-thing. I was bored, and thought it would be cool, so I followed it here," Adam said.

Hearing this weird-guy's voice snapped a connection in Tommy's mind. This was the same pizza guy who gave Tommy a hand in fighting the Vlork all those months ago. The same day the tablet was robbed in the first place. And now after all this time, he's run into this guy again purely at random. _What even is random anymore?_ Tommy thought. It's weird, his entire life thought things just kept randomly happening to him. A couple of years ago, he wouldn't never have expected that he would become a skilled fighter, or victim of brainwashing, or especially a superhero. All of that just seemed to come out of nowhere, great and terrible. He never knew what was coming gonna come at him from around the corner, could be anything, could be certain death, but Guardian just showed him that nothing in life was random, and that was scarier to him.

Adam moved over to the couch where Rocky was sitting. "Dude, you look so gnarly, man, and shiny!" Adam reached over to touch Rocky's crystal arm.

"Touch me only if you're okay with losing a finger," Rocky said.

He smiled back at Rocky. "Do I get one of those awesome claws to replace them with?" Adam reached over again.

Rocky flinched and pulled away from him, his black eyes wide with legitimate fear. "What is wrong with you?"

Adam's mouth gaped open. "Dude! My mom asked me the same question not to long ago, and. . ." He stared off into space for a moment then he slapped his knee as he turned over to Tommy. "I keep forgetting to ask, you guys are Power Dudes? Right?"

"What?" Aisha said.

"Well you know," Adam said, "I figured with the fancy watch and all. . ."

Tommy rubbed his temple. At this point his secret identity was the least of his problems. He handed the black communicator to Aisha. "You get started on fixing it. I gotta take care of something."

Tommy wrapped his communicator around his wrist as he walked back to his room. He fiddled with its frequency knob, time to see if there was anyone out there that could help. Long shot for sure, but if he and Rocky escaped, the other rangers might have too.

Jason crawling through that frozen tundra entered his mind. No, he can take care of himself. Tommy had to assume the best. It was all he had.

"Hey, what do I do?" Rocky said, leaning away from Adam on the couch.

"Keep our guest entertained," Tommy said as he walked out.

* * *

Burning paper floated over the street as he walked over it, not paying attention to it. Jason was in awe of the sky, the burning bright sky. When his pod crashed, he witness it, the unimaginably gigantic slash in the blackness of space. Now it consumed everything up above, everything.

He had to look away from it, he had to, but the earth wasn't much better than the sky. Richie use to live in this cul-de-sac, those were sunny days. One time, Mr. G paid Richie and him fifty bucks to paint his house orange. He said he wanted it orange so that he wouldn't look bad next to his neighbors.

The house was black now, all of them were. Each home was scarred and marred, some collapsed. Richie's old house stared at him. Graffitied over the place where he use to drink Mrs. Kaspbrak's sweet lemonade were these eyes, millions of eyes.

Something was rolling toward him, Jason rushed over to the nearest bush and hid. Peering through the leaves, he saw a green military truck park in front of a home. A monster crawled out if it, a shiny, slender, tall bug-humanoid. It lurched up to the front door with grisly black book in its claw.

This was unreal. It didn't make any sense that this could've all happened when he was gone Could it? Carefully, he crawled through the brush to get as close to the home as he could.

The bug knocked on the door, and it peered open. _Oh my_ , Jason thought. A smaller bug, frailer and hunched over, came from the house.

Opening It's book, the tall bug leaned in closer to the small. "Do you dedicate your life, body, and soul to the Dark Specter for he may bring you into an age of peace?"

The small bug looked around the cul-de-sac with its black eyes, wide eyes, watery eyes. It gaze up at its superior, and sighed. "Yes," it said, "yes I do."

The tall bug grabbed the little one by its wrist and guided it down the porch steps. The little one climbed into the back of the truck, then stopped. He looked around for a moment, and for a second Jason swore he looked at him straight in the eye, before ambling into the truck.

They drove off, and Jason rushed to the center of the cul-de-sac. What was that? What happened to Angel Grove? Where was everybody? Jason fiddled with the communicator. No answer the last time he tried, but there had to be something. There had to be some answers.

"— ello— Is— out there?" a voice came out of the communicator's static.

"Yes, yes hello? It's me! It's Jason!" he yelled into the mic. "Is anyone out there? Tommy? Kim? Hello?" _Come on,_ he thought, _don't leave me now._

"Jase?" Tommy's voice cleared.

"Oh man, it's so good to hear your voice again," Jason said. He actually remembered Tommy's voice, that idea sent relief throughout his body. The cold didn't get to being stuck in a pod didn't get to him, and whatever was happening wasn't going to either. His friend was back, and that was real. This was real. "Where are the others?" he asked.

"It's a long story, man," Tommy said.

"What—" Jason stopped. He finally saw it. He might have caught it in the corner of his eye before, but this time he really saw it. How could he have missed it before? In the distance was a huge, black, stone pyramid that laid at the other edge of the city. It loomed higher than skyscraper in Angel Grove, and it lied below the only splatch of darkness in the white sky.

"Everything," Jason said, "tell me everything."

* * *

An icky feeling rose in Tommy's chest as he laid in his cot. His friend was alive, but he also didn't really tell him everything. Sure, he told that there was thing called the "Dark Specter" that was going to eat the universe, and that they needed to get the sword from the museum in order to stop it. But, he didn't mention Guardian, or how exactly "Dark Specter" was able to get to the universe in the first place.

Those details didn't matter anyway, right? The story was overly complicated and Jason only really needed to know the important parts. Then again, the part about Tommy becoming an immortal guardian of time and space after killing "Dark Specter" himself seemed pretty important. Maybe he should of mentioned it, maybe.

 _Who am I kidding?_ Tommy thought, _I'm a pretty bad friend, an awful one made of puke, but I'm in too deep now. I couldn't begin to explain all of that to Jason, even if i wanted to, and I want to, but It would best if I just stick with the plan we made and move forward. Regardless of what happens to me, at least I won't be able to hurt my friends anymore._

Tommy went out to the living room. Aisha was performing surgery on the black communicator with little tools, Rocky was trying his best to look comfortable in his chair, and Adam was still eating cookies.

"I just got into contact with Jason," Tommy said,"We're gonna head out to the museum and when we get back we'll see if there's anyway we get to where they're keeping the Rangers." He turned to Aisha. "So I need that teleporter ready to go."

"On it," she said without even looking up from it.

Rocky stood up from his chair "I want to go."

Adam copied Rocky's motion exactly. "Yeah me too,"

Tommy went straight to the front door, opened it, and looked back at them "Sorry man, we need to be as spread out as possible, and most of Zane's men know you." He turned his attention to Adam. "And you should probably just go home."

"Pffffffffttttttt." Adam slid back in his chair, while Rocky scowled at him.

"See you guys later."

The museum was completely abandoned. Peeking through the glass doors, Tommy saw the dark empty lobby, not even a sign of a security guard. He pulled at the door, locked. Glinting, a couple of diamonds rested in glass cases at the edge of the lobby, so they didn't move any of the artifacts, but why wasn't anybody there? _I guess everybody said, "Screw this junk," and ran before the the city went crazy,_ he thought, _It's what I would do._

"I guess I could just bust in," Tommy whispered.

"Bad idea," a voice said. _Please, just this once. Let this be who I think this is,_ Tommy thought, _give me some kind of win._

"Jase?" Tommy turned around, and there he was at the bottom of the steps, arms crossed, eyebrow raised. Still had that confident smile and those warm eyes. He was real. He was here. Something good actually happened, and that seemed almost off putting right now.

"Alway go through the back," Jason said.

Tommy laughed as rushed down the front steps. For a split second, he almost went in for a bear hug. _Nah, that's weird,_ Tommy thought as he shoved his hands back into his pockets. "Hey man," he said, " uh, uh, wow. I'm, uh. . ."

"It's good to see you too," Jason said.

Scratching at his face, Tommy mumbled some more. "Yeah, things have not great since you left. . . I, uh, I couldn't. . ."

"I'm sure you did the best you possibly could," Jason said.

"Yeah. . ." but he didn't. He knew that he didn't. How could Jason not know that he didn't? He left, and when he got back the town was an apocalyptic wasteland, run by mutant bugs. Why wasn't he mad? Why wasn't he grilling him with a speech like he use to do? Instead, he seemed calmed, like the world wasn't coming to an end at all.

"Come on," Jason said, "let's move."

* * *

Aisha poked around at the internal circuitry of the communicator. Carefully, she checked all the wiring to make sure it was in place. Billy said that the cyboreticulum needed to flash three times before you could properly reconfigure the quartz-injector. Got it, that was easy, but making sure that the vector matrix was fluxing was a different story. She had to make sure that all the crotonic cables were perfectly in place. If they were slightly off center, it could cause a short circuit. Billy made sure to emphasize that a short circuit could to the teleportation grid. Gently, she prodded the cables to make that sure that—

"Hey! What's up!"

Her tools clanged on the floor as she grabbed her chest in shock. Her bulging eyes shifted over. Adam stood there looking at her, happy as can be. She rubbed her temples as she slowly exhaled. "Don't do that!" she said.

"Sorry dude, but the cool looking guy told me leave him alone."

"And you came to me? You get bored preet easily, huh?" Aisha said, reaching for the floor.

Adam looked down at her, puzzled. "Nah, dude. Why would an unemployed pizza driver be bored all the time?" he said.

She snorted a little, Quickly, she covered her and return to looking for her screwdrivers. "Why don't you just go home then?"

"Don't really have much of one to go back to."

Dropping the screwdriver she just picked up, she looked up at him. "What? What do you mean?"

Crossing his arms and rubbing his neck, Adam mumbled. "Oh, I guess I forgot to mention my folks were bugs. And you see,a couple of days ago a truck came by and just kinda took them away." Adam cleared his throat. "When I said I followed the map over here because I was bored. Uh, I was bored because I was alone in my house for a couple of days."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

Squatting down, Adam picked up the screwdriver and handed it to her. "Dude, why? You didn't take them."

 _What a weird guy,_ she thought as she took the screwdriver, _nothing phases him at all. I guess that's a good thing, I think._

"These things just happen in this town," Adam said, "Let me tell you, I've seen some things in this town that—"

Out of breath, Rocky hopped into the room. "We need to get out of here right now."

"What?" she said. They all rushed over to the front windows. Peeking through the blinds, she spotted an army green truck parked in front of the house. Crawling out from behind the truck, three bugs made their way to the house, blaster rifles hanging from their shoulders.

"But they couldn't know that you guys were here," Aisha said.

"Doesn't matter. We need to move," Rocky said as he headed to the back. He stopped and turned around only for a second. "Come on, Aisha. Your not gonna safe here, either."

"Sorry Mr. Desantos," a voice descended down the stairs, "but she's not going anywhere and neither are you." waltzed down the steps, pocketing his phone, eyeing the three of them.

"Dude, what?" Adam said as Campbell made his way to the door.

Backing away from her father, Aisha stepped closer to Rocky. Adam trailed behind her. "Daddy, what are you doing?"

"Sorry princess," Mr. Campbell said, "but It's the Dark Specter's will that this happens. You'll understand soon."

"Daddy, don't!"

He opened the door. They flooded in, waving there blasters. Stalking the living room, one moved toward them with Its arms crossed behind his back. "Get down," it whispered.

She and the others dropped to their knees, hands up. Her heart raced as the two bugs jammed their blasters up to her face. Ravenously, they stared down at her and the others, growling.

"So," the head bug said, pacing over them, "What do we have here?" It turned over to Mr. Campbell.

"There he is!" Campbell shouted as he pointed wildly at Rocky, "There's the dissenter! The others are at the museum like I told you."

Shifting its black eyes over all them, the head bug wriggled its pinchers. It pace away from all of them "Take the traitor to Zane. Kill all the inferiors"

"Wait!" Campbell fell over and grabbed the bug's foot, tugging on it. " You said you'd help us ascend! You promised!"

It laughed at Campbell. "You? Ascend?" It laughed as it slashed it's claw across Campbell's face, knocking his glasses off. Campbell wailed as he shielded his bleeding face.

"Kill them."

Splitting her ears, A high pitched sound emanated from the blaster as it revved up. They grinned down at them as they scanned their hot red light over their. She clenched her eyes shut.

 _Slam!_

Opening them again, she saw Rocky land behind one of them, wrap on arm around its neck and grappled for the blaster. He got a hold of the blaster from behind and fired wildly at the other two bugs before forcing the bug he was holding to the ground.

Flung to the ground by the shot, the other bug twitched on the floor. The head bug ran at Rocky on all fours, lunging at him. It toppled over Rocky, bashing his head into the floor.

Without even thinking, Aisha reached for knocked out bug's blaster on the floor. Getting up, the twitching bug released a slimy hiss in her face. She kicked him right in the pinchers, and he squealed as she and grabbed the blaster.

She pulled the trigger, firing a red blast at the head bug and knocking him into the wall. Rocky tried to get to his feet, only for the bug he took down earlier to drag him back to the ground.

""Don't mess with my new gnarly best friend," Adam said as he smashed a table over the bug's head, putting him down.

Rocky heaved for breath as he tried to get up. "Thanks," he wheezed.

"No problem, dude," Adam said.

Rocky placed his claw on Aisha's shoulder to balance himself. "We need to get to Tommy," he said.

"Right," she said as she ran over into the room. She grabbed the communicator and her tools.

She rushed back into the living room to find her dad wrestling with one of the bugs. Campbell reached back and flung the key's at her. "Get out of here!" he said as he and the bug tumbled to the floor.

She and the boys rushed to the car.

* * *

Getting into back of the museum was easy, just a rock through a window did the trick, but finding the sword was another story. Tearing the lid off the box, Tommy looked into it, nothing but a bunch of wrapped ceramic. He stacked it on top the fifteen other boxes that he just looked through. Terrible luck, just terrible, there wasn't anything in them besides pots, jewelry, and the occasional clay figurine.

Twenty five more were left boxes laid on the shelf. Well, twenty five were left on the first shelf anyway. Tommy sighed at the cardboard mountain before him. He leaned over to the open door. "Any luck over there?" he called.

"No," Jason said from down the hall,"I'm mostly just getting paper. I'll try the next room."

"Alright." This wasn't alright. This sucked. They needed the sword now and this wasn't getting them anywhere. Tossing ancient artifacts like they were bean bags. Tommy quickly weighed each box before just throwing it with the others. Running through box after box, he cleared a shelf. He started the next shelf, he pulled the first one out, light, toss it.

 _Wait_ , as he pulled it out of the shelf, it felt heavier. It was longer than the others too. He placed on the nearby table and pulled off the lid. Straw, the box was filled with this straw-stuff. Digging into the straw, Tommy tried to feel for something, something metallic, something rough.

Something cold, something cold touched the tip of his fingers. He tore away at the straw, throwing it up into the air. Glimmering in the low light, there it laid, eons old, and yet still shining.

He pulled it out, balancing it in his hands. It was heavy and light all at the same time. Running his hand over the blade, he found that it wasn't as rough he imagined it would be. Smooth, cool, sterling silver all the way down. He gazed into the blade as his reflection gazed back at him. Hope, he was looking at pure hope.

His reflection darkened. He saw himself fade away into a shadow, an outline. Where his face once was replaced with blackness, and in that blackness the eye burned and carved itself all over the face.

"No!"

"Hello Mr. Oliver," Guardian said.

The sword trembled in his hands. No, not now anytime but now. Why now? Tommy's teeth chattered together as he stared into the red eye, stared into the endless void beyond it. "How? How?" he stammered.

"The walls are getting thinner," she whispered,"I'm coming through. Even as we speak, I'm inching my way through the cracks to you."

"Stop!"

"Do you think your going to save your world? Save him?" She laughed at him. "Your not even strong enough to tell him the truth."

"Shut up!"

"I've seen it, he will die, the world as you know it will die, and you will watch it all happen before you finally die yourself!"

 _Flash!_

The sword tumbled to the floor as Tommy keeled over. A Stinging shot through his eyes as he rolled on the floor. Rubbing the pain away, he covered his eyes. The same thoughts came to him over and over again: _I can't tell him, I couldn't tell him. I have no choice._

Those words stabbed through his brain. _I have no choice. . . No._

Jason rushed in and helped pick him up form the floor. "What's going on man? What's wrong?"

And as the burning tears came from out of Tommy's eyes, he let it all. "You died!" he wept. "I killed you and you died alright! The pyramid collapsed on you, and used the Key to bring you back like it never happened."

Jason looked puzzled, like Tommy was speaking another language to him. "What are you talking about?"

Tommy heaved as he spoke. "When I used the Key it created a crack in the universe, and that's how Dark Specter got in, that's how all of this started! I actually talked to Dark Specter, but I didn't think to ask—"

"Woah man, breathe."Jason placed his hand on Tommy's chest and guided him through his breathing. "Look, I don't know what you're talking about, but whatever it is, it doesn't matter now. It's done. We need to focus on what are we going to do now."

Breathe slowly returned to Tommy. "Jason, I—"

Yelling emanated from down the hallway. "Hold that thought," Jason said, "I think we got company." Tommy grabbed the sword and they headed out.

They walked out to the lobby, where bugs stood outside of the glass door with torches. They stood their like statues with no expression on their faces. They looked, surrounded. There was no way out.

"Power Rangers!" a voice said through a megaphone, "Surrender the sword, and you'll be allowed the opportunity to assist our ascension!"

"Zane," Jason said.

"Not gonna happen nutjob!" Tommy said.

"Then let the fun begin," Zane said as he laughed.

The bugs smashed their way through the glass. Most of them threw their torches on the carpet.

"It's morphin' time!" Jason said.

In a flash, the red and white rangers came running at the bugs. Jason with his sword. Tommy with the silver one. Tommy swung it into a bug's shoulder, hoping to prove that it really was the tool to their salvation, but it became stuck in it's crystal hyde.

 _Oh come on!_ Tommy thought as he struggled to pull it out, but another bug whacked him in the face. Jason ran in and sliced into the bugs chest.

More bugs came, swinging their torches at Tommy. He blocked with his left arm, but the bug punched him in the gut.

* * *

Jason dash toward toward Tommy, swinging away the whole time, but something violently whacked in the face, smashing his visor. He collapsed onto the wall and tried to pull himself back up to face his attacker.

Zane stood their with a busted plasma rifle, his evil grin emphasised by his sharp, crystal, angler head. One of his bugs handed him the sword. He swung it around a little, caressed the blade with his fingers, gazed into his own reflection. "It's a shame really," Zane said, slipping the sword in the back of his jacket, "You guys could've really enjoyed the universe's final hours, but no, you had to try. And now you'll never see them."

"And you'll never see reason," Jason said.

"You betcha!" Zane raised the plasma rifle over Jason's head. He readied his hands to fight back, then he saw it. Crawling on the wall, a bug got itself as high above Zane as possible, and tackled him to the the ground.

The two of them pounded into each other and tossed each other around until Zane kicked the bug and flung it over to the wall. The bug stumbled back to its feet as the dust fell of him. Jason stepped back from it as it ambled to him.

"Hey Jay," It said.

"Rocky?" Jason asked, "Is that you?"

"Yeah," Rocky said, antenni twitching.

Jason was surprised to see what happened to his friend, but he didn't have time to question it, as Zane came right at them.

* * *

Rocky ran at Zane, claws swinging, and he slashed at Zane's left cheek, but Zane just picked him and threw him at the wall. Jason swung at Zane ,but he just picked him up and threw him like he was nothing.

Picking himself back up, Rocky tried to get to Jason, but Zane just swiped him to the ground before grabbing Jason. Smashing Jason's head through the glass displays, Zane tossed him around for a bit before throwing against the ceiling.

Zane walked over and grabbed Rocky by his antenni and dragged him across the floor. He thrusted his skull against a marble pillar and again, and again, and again. Crackling, Rocky's hyde leaked blue blood.

He lifted Rocky's head up and pulled him over to the crowd of bugs. Cheering, everyone was cheering Zane on. They applauded at Rocky's agony. They loved every minute of it. Leaning into Rocky's ear, Zane whispered to him. "Some things never change, brother."

Rocky was flung into the horde of bugs.

* * *

Tommy tried to get to Jason and Rocky, but he had to push the other bugs away. He saw Zane pumble Jason until he was demorphed and on his knees. Zane pulled out a blade and raised it above Jason's head.

"No!" Tommy said as the bugs pushed him back.

Mr. Campbell's car crashed through the museum doors, and ran over a bunch of the bugs. Adam screamed as he drove into them. Zane dropped Jason and he fell back.

"Get in," Aisha said as she swung the door open.

Tommy climbed inside. They drove by Rocky and he hopped in holding Jason. Adam crashed the car through the doors, down the stairs, onto the street. They raced through town at high speed, only for a big black semi to turn onto the road. Engine revving, the semi chased after them.

It came so close to them that Tommy saw the bugs in the cab wave their fist in joy as they approached him. He turned away from the window. "Aisha, we need to be beam outta here," Tommy said.

"I'm working on it," Aisha said as she prodded at the communicator.

"I don't think we have time," Adam said, pointing. Another semi came heading straight at them from the other end of the road, and they weren't slowing down. "I don't think this car can take being sandwiched," Adam said.

"Aisha?" Tommy said.

"Almost there," she said.

The semi behind them was almost half a foot away from Tommy's feet, and the other one bared toward them, ten feet away at most. _No she's got this,_ Tommy thought, _You told her that, and it will happen. It's not over now. It can't be now._ The front semi's grill came right up to them.

"Got it!" she said, glowing Tommy and the others quickly reached for her.

And in a flash, they were gone.

* * *

The safe house was poorly lit even when compared to the command center. It was basically a glorified cave with metal walls control panels. Those control panels and emergency lights were the only illumination.

Tommy dragged Jason of to the back corner, where the medical bay was. More lights came on as Tommy entered. He threw Jason into Zordon's Eltarian healing pod. Tommy opened up the glass, pill shaped tube, and laid Jason down into it. He shut the glass and pressed the green button.

 _Come on Jase, you can pull out of this_ , Tommy thought. The pod whirled as a green light ran down through Jason's body.

"Injury identification complete," the female computer voice said," healing time estimation: three hours."

Tommy rubbed his face. How could things get any worse? They lost the sword, Jason was out for the count, Forrester's taken over the city, and the other rangers were still missing. Tommy was just left by himself with three civilians to take care of. There had to be a way out of this, Tommy knew that, but how?

"Hey dude," Adam said as he ran to the doorway,"you better check this out."

On the little viewing globe, the logo for Angel Grove's channel 4 news was displayed. A voice, muffled by bad microphone, said, "And now a special announcement from our leader."

The T.V error colors flashed for a second, but then it cut to the news anchor desk. Forrester sat in the desk, his skin completely covered in crystal and his fingers turned to claws. He said with a smile, " Greetings my brothers, we have done it. We have successfully destroyed the chains that have bounds us for millennia."

 _Millennia? He really has lost it_ , Tommy thought.

"We have the power now," Forrester said, "no longer shall we bend our wills to the might of governments, or men in costumes. No longer we will be shoved in the gutters and the sewers of the world. Now we will have the power to decide our own destiny. Our destiny to create a new world, where we will reign in eternal peace and prosperity for all.

"But first, we complete the cycle and destroy this world once and for all. We can bring the Dark Specter to us, and he bring us this peace, but we all must contribute."

The program cut from Forrester to the inside of a large stone room, the pyramid. It had to be inside the pyramid. There, a group of bugs injected themselves with metal cords, purple electricity running through them.

Forrester narrated on: "We need as much energy as we can spare in order to bring the Dark Specter to us. If you are one us, one of the sacred then you must join us, and must help us bring in the inferiors so they may see the darklight," the program cut to bugs dragging people over to the metal cords, "Those who chose not to accept the Dark Age will be used by, burnt by it, like their false-heroes." The camera on the street panned over; the Pink, Yellow, and Blue Rangers hung from the cords, their armor cracked, electricity draining from them.

Every muscle in Tommy's body went numb at the sight of them.

It cut back to Forrester, "See you there, brothers," he said. The T.V signal then errored out into static.

"What do we do, Tommy?" Aisha asked

The question shocked Tommy awake. He looked over at her. Biting at her nails, she was clearly eagerly awaiting for him to say something amazing, something heroic, something that Jason would be saying right now. Blank, his mind was completely blank. He scrambled for words. "Uh. . .uh—"

"Nothing," Rocky said.

Tommy turned around. Rocky was sitting at the edge of the room, facing the wall. He was putting an ice pack on his face, though it probably wasn't helping with his pain that much.

"We can't do anything," Rocky said, "We might as well just sit here and wait for the world to blow up."

"You can't be serious, man?" Adam said.

"Yeah I'm serious," Rocky said,"they have taken over the whole town, Jay's out of it, they got the Power Rangers, and the sword! We've already lost." He curled up closer to the wall, back facing them.

"No," Tommy said, marching to Rocky, "Jason wouldn't have given up, and I'm not either. I've seen how this ends and I'm not letting that happen! But I need help."

"Whatever," Rocky muttered.

"He's got a point Tommy," Aisha said, wildly wringing her fingers through her hair, "I mean, I don't want the world to end, obviously. I'm mean the world has everything I love in it, my friends, my family, school, my job, my volunteer job, my stuffed animals and all that, and would never ever imagine letting that go. Plus, dying is not really something that I'm looking forward to either, and—"

She stopped herself, and took a breath. "It's just that, I'm an honors student, also an intern. I can't fight an army. I mean, I can barely stay awake and function through my day-to-day life."

Before Tommy could say anything, Rocky rose a little in his chair. "Yeah," he said, " I'm a homeless criminal, a whipping boy for a psycho, a bug." He hid behind his ice pack. "I'm no good to anybody."

Tommy looked over to Adam. He was leaning back the whole time, just listening. He turned over to Tommy and slipped his aviators off his face. "And I'm just some dude," he said.

Tommy observed all them as they squirmed in there seats. _Alright,_ Tommy thought, _I'm just gonna let this one out. Not gonna try to shape this into something it isn't. I'm just going to tell them how things are._

"Guys," Tommy said, gaining their attention, "almost everything you said about yourselves is true."

They all looked at each other, confused.

"And It's enough," Tommy said, "You guys have everything you need to save the universe. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Some mornings I wake up, and I realize how insane my life really is! Interdimensional-cosmic-ethereal-whatever baloney is thrown at me everyday, and I'm numb to it. I just roll with it! I don't know why it's me that has to fight this stuff, and I don't really think that it matters that it's me. I don't think Jason, Billy, Kim, Trini, or Zack think it matters why it's them doing it. We're not even adult yet! Why us? Eh, whatever, we'll do it. So trust me, when I tell you that what you go is enough. It will be, because it has to be enough."

They all just sat there for a moment, going from looking at each to the floor to back at each other. Aisha took in an heavy breath and stood up. "Alright then, how could I say no?"

Adam shot up into the air, almost flying off the ground. He slipped his aviator back over his eyes. "This might be cool, so I'm in."

Tommy looked over at Rocky. He raised out of his chair, only slightly. He looked at the wall, then down at the floor, then up at Tommy. "You know, we'll lose," Rocky said.

He placed a hand on Rocky's chair. "Let me tell you something, something more true than anything I've ever heard Forrester say." Tommy leaned in, closer to Rocky than he's ever been before.

" _We can't lose._ "

* * *

Tommy laid Jason on the medical bed. He laid his head on the pillow, then he adjusted his feet, then he covered him with the blanket. Tommy sat at the foot at the bed.

"Jase," Tommy said, "I don't know if you can hear me, but I thought I'd just let you know why I did what I did. You see, I couldn't let you die, man. It just wasn't fair, you know? That you would die, because I didn't listen, because you were nice enough to give me a another chance that I didn't deserve. You always gave me another chance. I use to call you stupid for doing that for me, you know? Like, why did always trust me, even I constantly screwed you over? And then I was stupid enough to get you killed, and then stupid enough to break the whole universe just to fix my dumb mistake.

"But, now it's time. I don't know if I'm coming back, man. So I just wanted to let you know that I was sorry, and I hope that I can fix this. I hope the universe doesn't fall apart because of me, and I hope you pull through, because you deserve it, man. You really do."

Tommy wandered to the doorway, then he looked back at him. He rested comfortably, it seemed, all curled up like that. Peaceful. A cozy little image of Jason, the last one he'll ever see.

"Goodbye."

* * *

Gazing at himself in the blade, Zane swished the sterling silver sword around in his hands. He always loved blades, the grace they had. There was a beauty to the sword. There was an art to taking out people with them, much more beauty to it than gunning someone down. It was so pretty too, so he had to snatch it, regardless of what the old man said. The world was ending anyway, right?

It was a shame, though. It seemed like he'll never have the chance to cut somebody with it. The old man said that he'll be starting the machine soon, and there was no way those goody-two shoes were gonna stop him in time. It was so boring now. All he could do now is lean back, look at the dying embers in his fireplace, and sip at his apple juice. At least he had his apple juice.

A bug stalked into his office. "Sir, you have to see what we have at the gate."

"What now?" Zane said as he got up from leaning in his chair. Some of these bugs have become incredibly dumb after the radiation hit their brains. They could barely do anything by themselves. It seems like every five minutes there's some problem that he had to fix for them.

Following the bugs through stone caverns of the pyramid, he marched all the way to the top of the surrounding wall. The open air was cool, but it was kinda warm too. Man, whatever was going on in the sky had weird effect on the skin.

He couldn't believe what his four eyes were telling him. Beyond the gate, Rocky strode down the road with. . . prisoners? Dragged along by chain, Tommy Oliver and the other two inferiors stumbled behind him, sweet defeat on their faces. Rocky strung them along with one hand,holding a plasma rifle in the other.

"Well, well. . ." Zane stuck his open hand out to his side. A bug handed him his megaphone. "Rock! My brother," he yelled," what do you think you're doing?"

"I've come to join the winning side," Rocky called back, "you wanted them. Here they are."

"How do I know that this isn't some kind of trick?"

Rocky walked over to Tommy Oliver, grabbed his chin with his claws and turned his head to the side. Bloody claw marks streaked down Tommy's face.

"Impressive," Zane said.

Reaching into his leather jacket, Rocky pulled something out. Squinting, Zane barely saw it, but he saw it. In Rocky's claw was that thing that turned Tommy into a Power Ranger.

"Excellent," Zane turned over to the bug next to him, "lower the gate and the take the prisoners. I want a word alone with him."

"Welcome to humble abode," he said as he entered his office with Rocky. This Dark Age has brought a lot benefits to Zane. Not just a fireplace, but the old man was able to get him a nice bookshelf. He didn't read any of the books, but it looked cool. But nothing was gonna top the portrait of himself that hung above the fireplace.

Rocky sat down on the nice leather couch they stole from a department store. Zane went over to his desk and grabbed his apple juice.

"Drink?" Zane asked.

"No thanks."

"Alright." He snapped his fingers and the two bugs by the doorway shut the door, closing them in.

"So tell me," Zane said, pouring his juice into a glass,"what finally made you see the darklight?"

"I don't know. I guess after you slammed my face in, it became clear to me how stupid everything was, how unfair it was. I mean after all the stuff we've been through. I couldn't let it pass. Everything here just has to go," Rocky said, playing with the morpher in his hand.

"Well I'm very happy for you," Zane said, reaching for his plasma-handgun, "but unfortunately there is the little fact that you've tried to kill me." He faced Rocky, gun in one hand, juice in the other.

Rocky's head tilted to the side.

He flipped the safety off the blaster. "You've gotten in my too many times; you gotta pay, that's the only rule I still value."

Rocky scratched at his head "You gonna shoot me?" he asked. "After all that, you're just gonna shoot me?"

He stared at Rocky for a second, then he said: "You're right," he dropped the gun and chugged his juice. "You deserve far worse," he reached behind his desk and pulled out the sword, "I'm gonna cut you up into tiny piece and mount them above my fireplace, before the world burns out."

"Wow, you really got things figured out, don't ya? But you don't, man."

"How's that?" Zane asked.

"Because I know a lot about you, Zane. I know that you're a creep that couldn't possibly resist keeping the sword for yourself and that if you had the chance, you would make sure to get Rocky alone with you, so you could kill him. Or at least, that's what Rocky told me," Rocky said.

"What?" Zane said.

"I know a lot about you now, but you don't know me at all," Rocky reached over to his neck, grabbing it like he was about to choke himself then pulled something out. It was like a necklace just popped into his hand. His face, his whole body flashed green for a second before fading from existence. Rocky's crystalline body was gone. In his place sat Tommy Oliver.

"It's morphin' time."

The glass shattered on the floor.

* * *

Before him were rows, and rows, of bugs hanging from metal cords leading up into the high ceiling. Rocky tried to keep his head down as the bugs passed by him to exit, hoping they won't noticed the projector on his neck. Scanning the room, he found only one bug guarding the door. The bug pulled down on a lever to open the stone gate behind them. The other bugs exited the room.

She bumped his shoulder to get his attention. Trying to keep her hands down, Aisha pointed to the corner of the room. There, the bodies of the Blue, Yellow, and Pink Rangers hung. He tapped on Adam's foot. _Ready, set. . ._

"Go," she whispered.

Ripping the M.A.S.Q.U.E off his neck, Tommy's image flashed off of Rocky as rushed over to the gate control. He clobbered the bug-guard with both of his fists, and pulled the lever, slamming the gate shut.

Rumbling the gate, the bugs on the other side banged against the stone. Muffled yells seeped through from the other side. _Okay now we have bought ourselves at least some time to work with,_ Rocky thought. It was going to be awhile before they figured how to get through.

Aisha frantically paced around the room before stopping herself "Alright let's get to unplugging," she said, "Starting with them." She pointed to the Rangers.

Tugging them back from the ceiling, Rocky hugged all three of them and pulled. The Rangers flopped to the floor. Adam quickly plucked as many cords out of them as they could.

"Hello? Hello? Is anyone awake in there?" Adam said, knocking on all of their helmets. Twitching, the Yellow Ranger's fingers flexed, and the Blue Ranger's knee started to bend. The pink one's head shifted from side-to-side.

"We've got movement," Rocky said. _Three down,_ he thought. He looked into the sea of bugs hanging before him. _A hundred more to go._

* * *

Tommy dashed out of the office, sword in hand. Knocking Zane with his desk and his coach wasn't going to keep him down for long. Running through the corridors as quickly as he could, he needed to get to the roof and buy Rocky, Adam, and Aisha the time they needed. If everything went according to plan, he might need the sword, hopefully.

Rushing down the hall, he found some stone steps. Tommy ascended up them.. A light at the end of them grew bigger and bigger until he was out of the stairwell and out into the air.

The sky was just as blinding as ever. Overhead, the black vortex pulsated and dilated. More stone steps lead him up even closer to the vortex. As he walked up the steps, Forrester's back emerged, cloaked and with metal cords running into it.

Forrester slowly turned to face him. His glasses were gone and his head was shaved. Though crystallized, his face seemed drained, withered, cracked. He seemed much older now than he ever looked before.

"I'm tired boy," he said, raising the Key, "I'm tired of all of this."

"Likewise," Tommy said, "but you can but you can stop all of this right now. Just drop the Key and go home."

Forrester shaked his head.

"I'm giving you a choice," Tommy said.

"There is no choice. It has to be done. Between living in this toxic world or creating a new one, there is no choice at all," Forrester said, returning his attention back to the vortex

"Listen to me you idiot!" Tommy said, " I've seen the other side, and let me tell you, there's no Dark Specter, there's no new age of peace and prosperity. You are being conned by a cosmic entity, and it's not gonna give you freedom, It's not gonna a new world. . . and it's not gonna give your wife back."

He snapped to Tommy. "What?"

"Yeah, I know. I felt it, and you know how." Carefully, he approached Forrester. "You must felt it too when it happened. You probably felt it more than I did."

He gazed down at the Key. "She deserved more. . . I couldn't have given it all to her. . . I tried, I should have. . ."

"Some people are just too good," Tommy said, inching toward him.

". . . And because of you I'll never get the chance!" He swung the Key at him, forcing Tommy back. Forrester raised the Key high into the air. It sparked as the blade whirled.

"Alan, I didn't kill her! And neither did you!" Tommy gripped the sword with both hands. "You think this is what she would've wanted? For you to turn the universe into a crater?"

Sparking, the purple electricity flowed into his back. "We shall see. For the time of our judgment is now!" The Key whirled infinity, it sparked, it illuminated.

It faded, the light died, the electricity vanished.

"Sorry, but we'll have to wait a little longer," Tommy said.

* * *

Aisha snapped her fingers in front of a bug's face as it's eyes opened. The bug and the two bug's next to it rubbed their heads with their claws."They're coming out of it," she said to Rocky.

Rocky stood over four bugs who were struggling to get to their feet. Adam helped another bug lean against a wall.

One of the sleepy bugs rubbed its black eyes and flexed its antenni. It stared wearily at Aisha. "What is going on?" It asked her.

"It's alright, We're gonna get you out of here," Aisha said as the three bug in front of her looked around the room. They looked from the ceiling over to the gate, to each other.

"Stop the inferiors!" one of them shouted.

"What?" she said as the bugs grabbed her arms. The three of them surrounded her, tugging at her arms. One of them covered her mouth with it's humungus claw. Trying to pull away from them, she scream through the claw the best that she could.

"We must not let them interfere!" another bug said, tackling Rocky to the ground. More and more bugs dogpiled on top of Rocky. He struggled to whack them off of him, but they forced him to the ground. Another bug Slammed Adam up against the wall, while another ran to the control lever and pulled it. The gate ascended upward.

Zane stood there, smiling, ten more bugs snarling behind him. They flooded into the room and swarmed Adam and Rocky.

Billy and Kim were consumed by the horde of bugs. They were thrashed around from one side of the room to another, their armor chipping apart with every thrust. The bugs lifted them both high in the air, and made them ride a surf of claws.

Tugging the best she could, she tried to pull away as the three bugs dragged her over to swarm of ravenous bugs. _Why did I listen to Tommy?_ She thought as she inched closer to the chaos, _This isn't me! This isn't me at all!_

A yellow strike sliced through all three of the bugs, sending them to the ground. _What?_ Aisha floundered for explanation. Something grabbed her hand. Over her shoulder, she saw it was Trini pulling her away from the horde.

"Come on!" Trini yelled. They ran through the rows of hanging bugs, deep into the seemingly endless room. Turning to the back corner, they found a dark little pocket in the floor and they climbed down under it.

Cradling herself on the ground, Aisha sobbed among the electrical wires. Trini squatted down to her level, Opening her helmet. "Are you scared?" She asked.

"Yes," Aisha said, "I don't feel like I can do this."

"Believe me, It doesn't matter how you feel about matters is who you are when the moment to shine comes. Right now, you're a Power Ranger, got it?" Trini said.

"Uh. . ."

"Think about it," Trini took out her daggers," I have to go out there and at least try. I have to try." Trini climbed out there, and Aisha didn't know why, only that she wanted to, and maybe that was enough.

* * *

Tommy's eyes widen, the electricity flowed back through the cords. Forrester smiled as he reactivated the Key. _Well, I guess I'm out of options_ , Tommy thought.

He raised the sword and ran at Forrester. The sword clanged against the Key. Vibrations reverberate through him, pushing him back. _Why is it never easy?_

Tommy ran at him again. Forrester blocked and knocked Tommy to the ground with the Key. Forrester levitated up into the air as the Key whirled and sparked. The black vortex grew until the entire top of the pyramid was covered in darkness.

From nowhere, a long crack appeared in the thin air. An outline of a person crawled for out of the crack. Tommy gulped as he saw Forrester get thinner and thinner as he descended onto to the ground.

"Yes, finally you are here my lord," Forrester said with a cough.

As Forrester grew frailer, the figure became more visible, a crystal angel with large reaching wings, her face shielded by the red eye encrusted on it. Guardian had crossed the barrier.

Tommy cradled his head in hands. _No this can't be it._

Forrester dropped to his knees. "This world is ours now, my lord," he said. presenting her with the Key.

The red eye receded from her face, exposing her pale skin and blues. She looked straight into his eyes and grabbed the Key out of his hands. "Thank you for playing your part. Now we can begin the cleansing, starting with you."

Forrester just gazed up at her, transfixed by her. His mouth opened as it withered away. His jaw moved as it fell apart. " _Jasmine_. . ."

And then, he was dust.

The cords snapped onto her wings and the electricity flowed into her. "Don't worry Mr. Oliver. His death was far less painful than if he experienced the universe's end, that's a luxury you won't have."

Tommy struggled to his feet. _I guess this is it, oh well._

Tommy ran at her and swung the sword. She blocked with the Key and swiped him of his feet with her wing. Tommy rolled out of the way before she slammed her wing into the ground.

He got up and slashed across her chest, cutting a little white crack on her. She swung the Key at him. Tommy blocked, locking the Key and the sword together. He tried to hold his ground as the vibration pushed against him.

The Key sparked purple lighting. He tried to shift his head out of It's way, but she pressed the Key closer to him. Tommy held firm onto the sword, but his knees buckled on the pressure. He was going down.

He tried to shift the sword to the other side. Maybe she would let go so she could strike him again? No dice. She kept on pushing forward.

A purple bolt burned into his back.

"I grow bored of this." She tossed him to the ground.

He wiped the dust off of his visor as she flew up above him, her wings spread out. He tried to crawl away, but she swooped down and snatched him like a hawk.

Wind rushed through the cracks in Tommy's visor as she lifted him in the air. She curled her wings around him and dived head first downward.

They crashed into the ground, forming a ditch in the pyramid. Tommy crawled as best as he could.

"Power at fifty-percent," the computer in his helmet said.

 _Where's the sword? Where is it?_ He scrambled around in the rubble looking for it. He reached his hand over the rocks for it.

She stepped down hard on his arm, crushing his armor. Tommy screamed. She stepped off. Tommy looked up in agony.

She held the sword in both hands. "My mother once told me that every universe has the right to exist, that every civilization deserves a chance to thrive," she snapped the sword in half and threw both halves to the side, "we never agreed to disagree."

"You're insane, a uncountable amount of people will die," Tommy said through his teeth. His armed ringed in pain.

She grabbed his helmet and rammed it into the ground.

"You,"

 _Slam._

"Do not."

 _Slam._

"Deserve."

 _Slam._

"This world!"

She dropped his head, and it flopped down by itself. Both of his visor and mouth guard were broken. The taste of blood filled Tommy's mouth.

"This reality is a mistake, a wound that needs to be disinfected. My home is eternal. It must continue on. I _know_ that," she said.

Tommy's head swirled. He wasn't going to be able to convince her of anything.

* * *

Adam tried to kick off a couple of bugs as a couple held onto his arms. Claws buried themselves in this head. Two more wrapped around his shoulders. They too strong. He couldn't kick his way out of this.

At of the corner of his eye, Rocky was struggling to get off of wall that Zane and another bug pinned him to.

The three rangers fought was best as they could, but Adam could see that they were drowning in a sea of bugs. The blue and yellow rangers lost their weapons into that sea.

The bugs gripped them and held them all to the ground. Many replugged themselves back in. Some bugs crawled back down from the ceiling with cords in there mouth. They were next.

"Now, do you see?!" Zane shouted as he pinned Rocky to the wall, " all they want is to take away our freedom! Are chance to bring an end to the corruption that contained us all!"

"Yeah!" They all shouted.

"They are not even worth being drained," Zane unsheathed a machete,"kill them." Zane threw it toward of the bugs. The bug went over to Adam.

The bug raised the machete over Adam's head. He saw his reflection shine in its blade. Adam's mind had gone completely blank. As the bug steaded the machete in its hands for a quick blow, something popped into the blankness. It was the only thing Adam could think of, and he spat it out immediately.

"Dude, what's your name?" Adam said.

The bug slowly lowered the machete. It tilted his head sideways.

 _Yes, this is good._ "Come on, man. You gotta have a name?"

The bug's eyes shifted from side to side. "Uh… I can't, I can't . . . B-Ben. My name is Ben," he said.

"Howdy Ben, do you have a family?" Adam asked. All the bugs seemed just as stunned.

"My wife," he dropped the machete, "where is my wife?"

"Kill him!" Zane shouted.

Ben just looked at him confused. "Why? He's just a kid."

"He is one them!" Zane pointed to the rangers,"he is the very reason why you lived in the dirt!"

"But, my wife. The White Ranger saved my wife, when nobody else cared."

"Enough of this," Zane took out a plasma handgun and shot Ben in the leg. Ben recoiled onto the ground. Everyone looked around at each other confused. Zane pulled Rocky off the wall, held him close, and pointed the gun at Rocky's head.

"You almost killed one of us!" one of the people shouted.

"And's willing to kill me," Rocky said.

Adam could tell by the look on his face that was too confused to do anything. "You think this guy wants to protect you?" Adam said. "Do you guys think he really knows what you want? He hasn't helped you. All he's done is put you in a hole turned you guys into a mad swarm. The Power Rangers never did that."

And right before Adam's eyes They dropped the Power Rangers and began unplugging themselves as they surrounded Zane.

"Stop, or I shoot," Zane plunged the gun into Rocky's head. He began to slowly back away. He threw Rocky and ran for the hills.

Someone rushed by Adam, someone almost faster than light itself. Next thing he knew, two yellow daggers sticking in Zane's back, making him twitch and convulse on the ground.

Right across from Adam, AIsha stood, squatting with her arms outstretched, panting. She turned her head toward him, eyes widened.

"Rad," Adam said.

The bugs trampled over Zane. They clawed at him, and tossed him around, ripping his jacket off, smashing his shades. He screamed and wailed as they pounded on him. "Rock! Help me!" he screamed.

"Whatever," Rocky said.

* * *

Tommy crawled to his feet. She raised the Key high into the air. Tommy looked around at the ground. It had to be somewhere. There! Under the rubble was the handle to the sword with a pretty sharp edge. He picked it up.

"And now," she said," is the beginning of the—" The electricity stopped. The Key stopped spinning. "What?" Guardian looked down at the Key, panicked.

From behind, Tommy jumped up and sliced her wing off. She screamed and Tommy sliced the other wing off. She jumped and flew a little away, before crawling to the ground, screeching. Two white light shined where her wings used to be

"Well, I guess you spent all your time knowing that you stopped learning," Tommy said as he walked up to her with the handle.

 _This is it, I guess. It's over for me, but at least I had fun. At least I can finally do some good for once. I get to take out the bad guy with quip and a smile. I wouldn't have it any other way-_

A red arm came out and wrapped itself around Guardian's neck.

 _What?_

The Red Ranger appeared from behind Guardian. Jason raised something over her head, but in a second Tommy knew that it was the other half of the sword.

"Jason wait!"

"I bet you didn't see that coming!" Jason plunged the blade into her chest. Guardian breathed heavily, wide eyed. Her chest began to crackle.

 _No. Not again._

The red ranger armor crackled away, a ray of white light illuminating from it. Tommy fell onto his knees. The red ranger helmet disappeared and beneath it Tommy could see Jason's face crackling away.

"Tommy. . ." Jason said.

Tommy was propelled into the air as an explosion of white light engulfed him.

* * *

Tommy got up, confused and dizzy. The vortex and the white sky began collapsing in on itself. "Jason!"he screamed as he ran. He ran all the back to the top of the pyramid. He stopped.

His whole body went to jelly; trembles ran through his muscles; sickness rose in his chest; pain stabbed through his skull. There were black scuff marks on the ground. A white orb floated beneath the vortex. The sword, the Key, and Jason's morpher all floated and spun around it.

The morpher floated over to Tommy. Carefully, he caught it, rolling the soot-covered relic in his hands, gazing into the golden coin within. Thoughts swirled through Tommy's mind.

 _What am I supposed to do now? What should I do with this?_

 _You know who to give it to._

 _What? No, he isn't ready to be the leader._

 _That's why you're the leader now._

 _No. No! This isn't right. This isn't how things were meant to be. It suppose to be me. You were suppose to get better. You were suppose to help them clean up the mess, because that's what you were always good at. Why did you do this? Why?_

 _Because, I'm stupid._

Tommy fell onto his knees.

 _Goodbye brother._

His eyes teared in pain as the orb, the sword, and the key lifted off into the collapsing vortex, and then everything was gone except for the dark blue sky. Jason was gone too. Everything he was and knew, was gone.


	12. A Whole New World

Tommy lived on his couch for the last three weeks, and he smelt incredibly bad. He laid unwashed, unshaven, unmoved in front of his T.V. All he had to keep him company was the Angel Grove Channel 4 News.

The morning anchors had bandages wrapped around over their foreheads and over one of their eyes. The male anchor said: "There are some reports of the E.S.B going through some major restructuring by the government. This is a result of the major inf—

The T.V shut off.

"What? Th-"

Billy came out from behind the couch and threw the T.V remote into his lap.

"Get up," Billy said.

"How did you get into my house?" Tommy asked.

"You left your door unlocked, now clean yourself up. We're going to see Zack," Billy said.

"Uh, I don't—"

"What are you gonna just sit here until another emergency happens?" Billy said.

Tommy tried to say something, but a bunch of mumbled garbage came out.

"Tommy we need you to get out of this house. Zack needs you."

He looked down at his feet, then he slowly climbed his way off of the couch with a growl. He staggered a little bit until Billy balanced him.

"Alright, let's do this."

* * *

Zack tried his hardest to fight off the putties as he jumped and kicked. He tried to fight them off with his special dance moves, but nothing worked. The putties kept coming at him, jumping out of all the windows. They surrounded him until one finally knocked him on top of the head.

 _Game Over!_

"Man, I hate this game," Zack lied. He loved that someone out there would put so much effort into making a bootleg Power Rangers' game for no money. Zack probably wouldn't even do that.

"You just suck at it, " Tommy said from the chair on the right of Zack's bed.

"Nah man," Zack said, "It's all wrong," Zack put down his controller and pointed at the screen of his laptop, "First off, the putties are purple for some reason, and secondly, they are nearly impossible to hit after they run you over with the motorcycle and then they just swarm you."

"You have to get your timing just right," Billy said from Zack's left," you just have to keep playing the same level over and over until you can find just the right time to get up and hit them."

"I guess," Zack said, rubbing his sore shoulder.

"You'll get better eventually. Statistically, you have to."

Zack smirked. "I do like how buff they made us all look," Zack said.

And they all had the biggest laugh that any of them had in a long time.

* * *

Tommy walked down the street, his muscles were feeling a little better after all the time he had spent sitting down. Seeing Zack yesterday was probably one of the best experiences he has had in awhile. Seeing him happy again, made a little glow in him. He knew what he had to do. He had to see the girls again as soon as possible.

Something colorful captured Tommy's eye has he passed by the brick wall, a poster. Tommy teared it off the wall.

 _The Helping Hands Community,_ it read in bold text. Below that it read: _Having problems? Need help with your home, or family, or job? Give us a visit! Especially if you have any talents that can help others out. The more you give to the community the more help you'll get when you're in need. Together, Angel Grove can clean itself up!_

Tommy smirked. _A little cheesy, but I like it,_ he thought. He read the bottom of the poster: _Community Organizers, Aisha Campbell, Adam Park, and Rocky Desantos._

A plan formed in Tommy's mind.

* * *

"I missed you so much!" Trini said. Her hug almost crushed Tommy's ribs.

"Hey girl," Tommy said as they walked through the community center, "how've you been?"

"You're seriously asking me? I was worried about you," she said.

"Yeah, sorry. I so dumb," Tommy said. They walked through the plain beige hallway down all the way down to the brown double doors.

"It hasn't been easy for any of us," she said as she placed her hand gently on his shoulder.

"Uh yeah, speaking of which," Tommy cleared his throat, "Do you still have your ticket to switzerland?"

"Well, the trip's been postponed for a couple of weeks, but I'm gonna tell them I'm gonna stay behind," Trini said.

"Just go," he said abruptly.

"Tommy, after all that's happened. I can't just—"

"Trini, you may come back to work when it's over, or you won'y, I don't know. I just know that if you don't do this. You'll regret it, and I know how bad it feels to spend your life thinking 'What if?' We talked about this with Zordon, It's fine."

Trini sighed and looked around aimlessly. "What about you guys? Don't you need as much help as you can get?"

"I wouldn't worry too much about that."

Tommy opened the doors; behind them was the grand colorful halls of the _Helping Hands_ community. People sat in chairs as other people in blue shirts talked to them. Some were bandaging people's healing mutations, some were showing them how to use tools, and some, like Rocky and Aisha, were showing off self defence moves.

Tommy saw that she was filled with wonder.

Aisha came up to them.

"Hey Trini, I showed pictures of your artwork to some of our richer members. They would love to buy some of it. We can use them for our upcoming fundraiser.

"People want my work?" Trini said.

"Totally, In fact, there's a buyer over there." Aisha dragged Trini away to the back.

As she was being dragged. Trini gave Tommy a glance. A glance that was both happy and sad at the same time.

* * *

Tommy clanged his glass against Zack's, and downed his coke. Zack carefully picked up a bendy straw with his bandaged hand and put it in.

"Hey Zordon," Billy said as cut up a slice of chocolate cake, "do you remember the time that Trini forgot she wasn't morphed, and she got into the griffin's face and slapped it? And then it actually ran away!"

"Why, how could I forget?" Zordon said with a laugh.

Even though Trini's going away party was technically yesterday when she left. Tommy and the others couldn't help but keep the party going on the next day while she drove to the airport.

They sat around the viewing globe as they watched her wheeling her bag through the airport.

"Hey, where did Kim go?" Zack asked.

Geeze, yeah. She's been gone for at least twenty minutes and Tommy didn't even notice.

"Rangers look!" Zordon said.

Tommy snapped his attention back to the viewing globe. Kim came running toward Trini at a million miles an hour.

"Wow. " Tommy said.

* * *

Kim's heart raced as she nearly bumped into several people in the airport. She jumped, hopped, and skipped through the crowd.

"Trini wait," dhe said.

Kim jumped at her, and nearly toppled her over. She held her tighter than ever before.

"Kim. . . People are staring," Trini said.

"I don't care, I just couldn't let you leave without telling you…"

"Telling me what?"

"That please, whatever you do, promise you won't forget about me," Kim said, sticking out her pinky

Trini wrapped her pinky tight around her's. "Only if you do too."

"From the bottom of my heart," they both said together.

"I promise."

* * *

As he walked across the grassy field, Tommy saw Walker standing alone under the grey sky. He stepped next to the man. Walked stared down at Jason's cenotaph, adjusting his arm the sling he wore. They just stood there.

"How old was he?" Walker finally asked.

"Sixteen," Tommy said.

"My kid's sixteen, you know? Loves the Power Rangers."

Tommy coughed in his throat. "Is that right?"

"Oh yes," Walker said, "Charlie's always talking about how amazing they are, how they always manage to pull through even when things 'stink worse than cabbage.' He really hates cabbage. "

"I can respect that," Tommy said.

"Yeah, he really looks up to you kids, looked up to him." Walker rubbed his neck. "Tell me, how's the wound?"

He just shifted eyes to Walker.

"Same here," Walker said.

"So, does this mean you know who we all are now?"

"We had some ideas," Walker said, "but I couldn't really tell you what they know now. I'm not really a part of that anymore. They said they wanted to take things in a different direction. Given recent events, they didn't want any of the old guard lying around, I guess."

"Huh."

"That's fine," Walker said, "I didn't exactly get in this business to shoot kids. I just wanted to. . . Sorry kid, for what that's worth. I'm—"

"It's getting late," Tommy said, "We should just go home."

"But. . ."

"Dude, It's cold, and I'm hungry. Charlie's probably hungry too," Tommy said,"but not for cabbage, of course."

"Burgers then?" Walker said.

"Yeah, that sounds good."

They left the headstone behind.

* * *

Tommy knocked on Rocky's door. Rocky came out squinty eyed, but then looked surprised. "Oh hey man, how've you been?" Rocky said in the most earnest voice Tommy had ever heard from him.

Tommy held his hand out, rocking it in a so-so motion.

"Yeah I would imagine," Rocky said. He almost looked to the ground, but then he clearly forced himself to look at Tommy. "That, uh, that really sucked."

Tommy couldn't help but smirk a little bit at that. " Well, at least you've been keeping yourself busy. I should've done that."

"Yeah, Aisha really thought I could help her with what she was doing, so I did it."

"She's a good friend," Tommy said.

"Yeah, so is Adam. We like to go the bowling alley after the day is done."

"That's cool. Hey, uh, How's the whole. . ." Tommy pointed to the slivers of crystal on Rocky's neck.

"Oh," Rocky held up his left hand. It was bandaged up, except for the pinky and ring fingers sticking out of it, "the doc says it's going to take a while before it's gone, before I'm back to normal."

"It always does," Tommy said.

They both stood their for a moment.

"Yeah, It's weird, because I don't what's gonna come after that," Rocky said.

"Well, I think I may something to help you with that," Tommy handed him a small cardboard box.

Dazed, Rocky took it. "What is it?" he asked.

"Just a tool to help you find out what you wanna do. Try it out, and if you don't like it, give it back."

"Uh, alright, thanks," Rocky said.

"I gotta fly man," Tommy went down the stoop,"I'll catch you on the flip side!"

"Alright, see ya around," Rock said as he went back inside.

Tommy went off into the road, crossing his fingers as he ran.

* * *

After a long day, Aisha jumped into her bed. Her hand rubbed against something. She got up and looked at it. A cardboard box laid on her bed.

That's right. Kim told her she wanted to give her something to look at when they were studying together. Kim must've left on the bed, and she must have forgotten about it.

She picked it up. There was a little card on it. It read: _Interested in upgrading your internship?_ She flipped the card over.

"No way," she said.

* * *

That Billy guy was pretty cool, but Adam wondered why he just came to his house and dropped this package off.

Adam leaned up from his chair and looked at it. A card on top of it read: _Heard you working looking for a job?_ _How about a cool one?_ Adam flipped the card over and what he read made him even more excited.

Adam opened the cardboard box and felt around inside the packing paper. His fingers touched something cold and metallic.

"Now, that's radical."

* * *

Rocky plunged his hand into the box, and pulled it out. Some paper got stuck on it, but he pulled it off.

And there it was in his hand, the red power morpher. It shined in the sunlight coming down from his bedroom window. Rocky gazed into it's alien shape. It felt good in his grip. He saw his own golden reflection staring back at him in the power coin.

 _No, this can't be. It shouldn't be._

But it was. It was too good to be true and yet it was true anyway. Despite everything, he was holding the sacred legacy of one of his closest friends in his hands. Out ofeveryone, Tommy wanted to give to it him.

Rocky picked the card up. The front read: _No doubt about it._ Rocky flipped the card over. The back read, Say _the magic words_.

Rocky stood up and gripped his hand onto the little handle. He took a breath then he slipped his finger over the little silver button the side. He clicked it, and as it whirled and glowed Rocky said the magic words.

"It's Morphin' Time!"


End file.
